Reblogged from Markvaughan2009's Blog:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

It is astounding to see, not only the variety of sweet summer drinks, but just how bad they are for you.  Every few minutes on TV we are reminded of the summer caps and the $1 drinks at at McDonalds and the myriads of ways to keep yourself cool through the consumption of excess calories and sugar.  It really is hard to escape.  

Read more… 1,097 more words

With the warm weather we have had in Vancouver, I was reminded of these suggestions I made last summer. They are as true today.

A little while back I was having lunch with my daughter at McDonald’s.  They had just come out with these real fruit smoothies.  I had seen the ads and they seemed to say that the smoothies were made with fruit, yogurt and ice, nothing else.  I figured that sounded pretty good, so my daughter and I each got one.  I had the strawberry one and she had the mango one.  I also asked for the nutritional breakdown on the smoothies, but they did not have it at this time.

So the smoothies arrived and I took a sip… and I couldn’t believe it.  They were sickeningly sweet.  Asian Bubble Tea sweet!  Disgustingly so.  They tasted so fake and sweet.  It was painfully clear that there was a tremendous amount of added sugar in this product.  I went back and watched the ad again, and of course, there is no mention of the sugar, just the mention of fruit, yogurt and ice. I went to YouTube to pull up an ad, but I can’t find any as offensive as the current ones, but this one isn’t bad.

You would think the way they are saying real fruit, they would really need to copyright other spellings for fruit, because the only thing I am not sure about in the smoothie is the real fruit.  I hate to harp on this point, but it isn’t that the smoothie is a little bit sweet either.  It is cloyingly sweet.  I went up and asked the person at the counter about the real fruit, is it real?  He answered that he didn’t know, it came as a liquid in a big bag…  I ended up just throwing out my smoothie and my daughter did as well.  We just couldn’t drink them.

They deliver a thin, watery fruit puree to each of the stores.  This is then mixed in a machine with ice and yogurt, so in some sense, you could imagine the logic in them advertising Real Fruit, Yogurt and Ice as the basis for their ingredients.  Still, lets take a look at the ingredients.  They are broken down into 2 parts, Fruit base and Yogurt, and you see, right there is the problem.  Fruit Base.  That isn’t the same thing as Real Fruit.  Not even close.

So, today I was in McDonald’s again and while I was there I figured I would ask for the nutrition facts on the smoothie.   They had them.  They pulled out a binder and let me see the ingredients and nutritional breakdown and, of course, there was sugar in the smoothie, and not just sugar.  For something that appears to only have 3 ingredients on the ad, the ingredients in real life don’t look anywhere near that simple.

The Nutrition

Fruit Base:

Lets look at the Strawberry Banana Fruit Base first.  It gets some good points for having strawberries and bananas in the first two ingredients, but then water, SUGAR, concentrated apple juice, (a nice note here telling us the remaining ingredients are less than 1% of the product), then it has artificial flavours, xanthan gum, citric acid, coloured with fruit and vegetable juices, and pectin.  I photographed the ingredients from the nutritional information (below):

For those of you who are aware, concentrated apple juice is another way of saying sugar, as is concentrated grape juice and I am sure any concentrated tropical juice.  So there are at least 2 forms of sugar in the fruit base.  The most ironic part of this isn’t the sugar though, it is the flavoring.  Really, there probably is a law against advertising your smoothie as Real Fruit and then using artificial flavors.  I would report them, but let’s be honest.  No government is going to do anything.  Maybe we need a class action.

In any case, the Mango Smoothie looks much better nutritionally, at least at first glance: Water, pineapple syrup from concentrate, mango puree concentrate, pineapple juice concentrate, orange juice concentrate, passion fruit juice, apple juice concentrate, natural (botanical source) and artificial flavors, (less than 1 % of the following) peach puree, cellulose powder, peach juice concentrate, pear juice concentrate, xantham gum, pectin citric acid, colored with fruit and vegetable juice and tumeric extract.  Please, note the ingredients are for the US Smoothie, not sure why, but I kept the US spelling regardless…

So, there doesn’t appear to be any added sugar in this base, but the thing is, all of those concentrated fruit juices are really just flavored sugar.  The other thing that gets me is the less than 1% part.  Does that mean that each of the ingredients comprise less than 1% or all of the ingredients after that warning add up to less than 1%.  I say this because there are at least 9 ingredients after the warning.  If each one is about 1% that means that they comprise almost 10% of the product.  I have to think it is the latter because I can’t imagine them adding 0.1% peach juice.  That is 1 part in 1000…

There is also the yogurt base:  Reduced fat milk, liquid sugar, whey protein, fructose, corn starch, kosher gelatin and active yogurt cultures.

Sugar shows up twice in the yogurt as well!! I would expect to find sugar here, but twice.  It is already the second largest ingredient.  Did they break it into 2 parts so that is wasn’t the first ingredient?  Probably…

The thing is, there is no WAY that you can call this healthy or Real Fruit.  It is a travesty.  I can quite often defend McDonald’s for serving what they say they are, but this is nothing short of fraud.  This is as close to a lie as I have ever heard from the food giant.  They are claiming the smoothies are part of a healthy new menu.  What a crock of $#!T.  These are so unhealthy!  Lets look at their nutrition.

Here is the document behind the counter...

and here is what the nutrition calculator on the website claims...

The Large Strawberry Banana with Yogurt contains 290 calories according to the paper (according to the website it is 310).   By the way, I have no idea where the different numbers are happening between the website and the book.  In any case,  I continually point out that your meal should be between 400 and 500 calories, so a large smoothie is almost a whole meal, which would be fine if it filled you up or contained little sugar and about 1/3 of a meals protein.  Problem with this is that the smoothie contains 64 grams of sugar (73 according to the website).  64 grams of sugar is 16  teaspoons of sugar (almost 18 if you go from the website)…  That is preposterously high.  The United States Department of Agriculture recommends no more than 40 grams of sugar a day (10 teaspoons) and with one of these smoothies you would be getting almost double that.  Apparently, The UN says that sugar shouldn’t exceed more than 10% of the energy intake of a healthy diet.  If each teaspoon of sugar is 15 calories then you are getting 256 calories from the sugar alone (292 from the website).  Strictly calorie speaking, sugar makes up 90% of the smoothie.  I can’t even think of many candies that are 90% sugar!  There is only 1 gram of protein in the product.  This is clearly candy.  The only reason the calories are lower than the McFlurry and the Milkshake are because there is no fat in it.  You can’t rack up the calories without fat.  1 gram of sugar 4 has calories, 1 gram of fat has 9 calories.  That is simple math.

Compared to a Big Gulp

Think about this though, the much reviled 7-11 Big Gulp, the ultimate symbol of excess and poor health is about 32 ounces.  This large smoothie is a fair bit smaller at 22 ounces.  Coke for example comes in at about 100 calories per 8 ounces.  That means a big gulp is about 400 calories.  A bit more than our smoothie above.  400 vs 310.  But wait, we didn’t ad any ice to our big gulp.  If you added just 25% of the volume as ice, which isn’t a lot, your Big Gulp is the same as the smoothie.  This healthy eating item is as bad as a big gulp.  It certainly has as much sugar.

If you think I am taking the worst case scenario Strawberry Banana by the way, I am not.   By any and all standards, the Mango Pineapple is worse.  It has 77 grams of sugar and comes in at 340 calories!!

This product is horrible for you.  Next time you are in a McDonald’s let the manager know what you think of their deceptive advertising and unhealthy offerings.  The marketing for this product is probably litigious it is so deceptive.  These people have proven once again they don’t care about you or your health.  You may think that anyone who could read the nutritional information would be picking up on the scam, but google ‘McDonald’s Real Fruit Smoothie Reviews’ and you will get a bunch of these-(and these, and these) people who think these are healthy!  Stay away from the Golden Arches unless you have gone over EVERY item on their menu and reviewed it nutritionally.  Speaking of which, you are aware that they can be off by 20% of their stated nutrition claims and still be calling it correctly labelled… Do you want to add 20% to the numbers and see how healthy that would make you?  What do you think?  Have you tried the smoothie?  Do you trust McDonald’s and their healthier menu?

Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivers his budget in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa March 29, 2012.
Photograph by: REUTERS/Chris Wattie , National Post

Finding out reliable information about food labelling is hard.  Okay, it isn’t just hard, for the average person it is nearly impossible.  Do you remember the great ‘Non-fat yogurt’ Seinfeld episode? (Season 5 Episode 7)

Elaine and Jerry ended up going to a lab and getting an analysis of some yogurt done for $45 or something.  Sure, they had to drive to New Jersey, but there was a lab nearby that would do the testing.  The thing is, I don’t think you can easily find labs who will test food products for you.  They don’t exist.  I tried to get Jillian Michaels diet pills tested against the claims of the ingredients and not one single lab would do it.  They all stated that they worked FOR the supplement industry and it would be bad business to do independent testing, even when independent testing was in their name!

I bet it is easier to get foods tested than it is supplements, but still, it certainly isn’t easy, and even with government oversight, we are pretty sure that most labels are already lying.  I recently found a clear error in the Kellogg’s label awhile back but that was after analyzing the label for something else-I actually spend awhile looking at labels for this blog.  The companies know that unless they are egregious in their claims, nobody is going to come after them, but even then, there are labelling controversies that come up all the time.  The government doesn’t do a lot about it, and aren’t nearly as vigilant as they could be, but still, companies lie about what is on the label all the time and only some of the time do they get caught.

Case in point:

Maple Leaf Foods and their Natural Selections prepackaged meats.  After the CBC chose to analyze the packaged meat that claimed to have ‘no added preservatives’, something interesting came to light.  The test came back positive for nitrites, the exact preservative that people are trying to avoid in deli meats that would make them choose the natural product.  Apparently Maple Leaf Foods adds ‘cultured celery extract’ to the meats which is apparently a natural source of nitrates:  ”For all intents and purposes it is bio-chemically identical,” said nutrition expert Dr. Yoni Freedhoff.

According to CBC news, Randy Huffman, chief product safety officer with Maple Leaf Foods was quoted as saying, ”Nitrite is very misunderstood. Nitrite is actually part of a healthy, balanced diet, it’s in a variety of foods that we eat every day,” he said, adding that the company’s labels were developed in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.  There has been some suspicion that nitrites can cause cancer, but the evidence on this is equivocal.  Nitrites do occur in nature and they are in some foods, but I think it is quite a stretch to suggest that makes them part of a healthy and balanced diet.  Arsenic and Mercury are found in nature and in some foods, but I wouldn’t suggest that they are part of a healthy diet.  Despite his bizarre claim, again according to the CBC, “the company sent an email to Marketplace this week saying it would change its Natural Selections labels to include the fact that the products contain nitrite.”

That makes sense though because whether you believe that nitrites are carcinogens or not, the point is you were probably reaching for the natural product precisely because you believe that they are carcinogens and that this product doesn’t have any nitrates in it, which turns out to not be the case.  The labelling, in this instance, was specifically designed to mislead the consumer and there is little or no chance that without the CBC’s help, this would have ever come to light.

The fact that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was complicit in this (if Randy Huffman’s claim is indeed true) is doubly disturbing because they are the agency tasked with labelling standards and keeping the public informed.

Government’s Job

You see, that is government’s job.  People may argue about how much government is too much and what government should be doing, but keeping the public safe is definitely one of their jobs.  Food labelling is about the consumer having the proper information about what the food they eat contains.  It is about giving the consumer as much information as necessary so they can make intelligent decisions about food consumption.  It is really simple.  The government should make the standards and require companies selling into their marketplace (ie to the Canadian consumer) to comply with the standards or be punished for failing to do so.

Given the estimated costs of obesity associated diseases (strictly the financial costs, not even trying to measure the emotional costs), it would be a prudent financial decision for any government to assist the population in eating as healthful a diet as they choose.  It would be foolish in the extreme to assist companies in hiding ingredients, making false claims or allowing for improper labelling of products.  To actually monitor labels of food products is simply beyond the capacity of any consumer and the pressure from marketing companies to make unsubstantiated claims for products is massive.  This is a recipe for disaster.  Again, from the CBC article cited above:

Matthew Diamond, a partner with marketing company Hunter Straker, said health claims can often be key to a company’s sales but are hard to investigate when buyers are actually at store shelves.

“I think consumers are savvy, but when you get into that grocery environment, you don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “You’re staring at a shelf, you’re confused.”

More needs to be done to enforce labelling requirements and that responsibility falls on government regulators, Freedhoff said.

“The food industry, it’s like a teenager,” he said. “It’s going to push as hard as it can, as far as it can, until someone smacks them on the wrist.

“And unfortunately there’s nobody doing much in the way of wrist-smacking in this country.”

One Less Job for Government

Well, if there was nobody doing the wrist-smacking in a figurative sort of way when this report was filed on February 2nd, then there is literally nobody doing it now because the federal government has just removed that responsibility from its plate.  As part of a $56.1 million dollar cost saving strategy.  According to the Province newspaper:

“The government will change how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency monitors and enforces non-health and non-safety food labelling regulations. The CFIA will introduce a web-based label verification tool that encourages consumers to bring validated concerns directly to companies and associations for resolution.”

Yes, you are reading that right.  You will get to complain to the company that labels the food about the food labels.  I don’t know how anyone said that with a straight face.  I have complained to companies about false claims and they hang up on me.  They never call back if they say they are going to, hell, they probably don’t even log the call anywhere.  I am probably talking to a phone service in India whose only job is to pretend to listen to my call.  The company isn’t going to do anything about my complaint and that is in a world where there is government oversight, where I can complain to a higher authority (although to tell you the truth, my current complaints haven’t received any more response than the ones to the companies).  Seriously, is this like complaining to Bernie Madoff that you aren’t getting your promised return on your investment?  Does the government think that would work?

In addition to this fiendishly clever plan to allow you to complain to the company directly, they are also planning some web-based label verification tool… again…seriously?!?!  That doesn’t even make sense.  How would a web-based tool work???  How could a web-based tool verify a label?  Here is there description:

“The CFIA will introduce a web-based label verification tool that encourages consumers to bring validated concerns directly to companies and associations for resolution.” (emphasis added by me).

How do you know what a validated concern is, as opposed to an unvalidated one.  Thankfully the government even included some examples of the kinds of things you might complain about:

Examples of “non-health and non-safety” food labelling rules include things such as grading of meat products and the net quantity of items.

Yep, you might want to complain to the company that there were only 11 eggs in your carton or the chips you bought weighed 2 grams too little.  I am betting that was a big issue about 100 years ago, but not so much now.  As for the grading of meat.  I ordered a steak at the restaurant at the Tulalip Casino, despite warnings from my brother that they didn’t use Grade A beef.  I figured how bad could it be given that the food at the casino’s finest restaurants is excellent and quite expensive and I figured this whole grading thing was a scam anyways.  It was horrible.  I had to send it back.  It tasted like it had been frozen and thawed out numerous times.  In any case, this is a rant for another time, but the manager had said that they didn’t use Grade A beef and although I wasn’t aware, this grading thing for beef is really important.  If the government isn’t going to be watching out for that one, things are going to suck for us meat eaters.

The Real Problem

The real problem here though is all of the health claims, ingredient claims and nutrient breakdowns.  These are already questionable, so what will they look like in the future.  We know the food companies would sell your health out for a penny (which ironically the government has promised to eliminate as part of this budget).  The government represents us, the consumers.  It is their job to make sure that the products sold to us are properly marketed and stand up to the claims they make, especially when we as consumers do not have the capacity to determine these things for ourselves.

What I want to know is how much money does the government generate from the food labelling program?  Do they have fines for failing to properly label a product?  Do they charge products a fee for getting a label review?  If not, why not?  Why would this program not pay for itself?  $50 some odd million is a lot of money and I understand why the government would want to trim this from its budget, but it is also a necessary function of government.  If you can’t (or shouldn’t) cut the program, can you make it pay for itself?  If you can, it is much cheaper for everyone involved, from government, to the consumer to the corporation to have one point of monitoring/reporting that is paid for by the companies selling the product.

After all, if government doesn’t monitor the food labels and the corporations begin to push their claims, then people will become wary and less likely to buy new products.  Food companies will have to create and pay different certification agencies to do the work that the government was doing and then these certification companies will end up competing against each other for the consumer trust.  Companies will either comply with the certification companies or not as they see fit, trying to create their own certification standards that support their product but refute the competitions (the health check symbol program is a perfect example of how wrong this can go), creating nothing but confusion.  Meanwhile consumers who are choosing to eat a more healthy diet will not be able to and we will see skyrocketing medical costs, in the end all paid for by the government.

It is all short sighted money savings, and even the most obtuse individual can see the long term money losses.  If the government would just push out its lens a little further than the next election and take its role of protecting the publics access to knowledge regarding OUR health, it would be obvious.  It has always been the case that business can not be allowed to monitor itself in our current capitalist society.  It isn’t their fault at all, as the system is designed to make them push as far as they can.  They could be found legally liable by their own shareholders if they do not.  We need to have someone to protect the public in this system and protect the corporations from going too far, and it is sad when that person, the government is actually out to protect the companies’ short term interests.  Companies will pollute the commons in the short term if they are allowed and it is in their long term interest to have someone monitoring the marketplace, not just the consumers.

Of course the biggest irony is the $115 million cuts to the CBC over the next three years, the same organization that brought to light the fast and loose labelling that Maple Leaf Foods was up to.

Well, it’s on!  First I will expose your product for what it is, along with who the producer is.  Then I am going after the Radio Station for taking your money, and along the way I will be reporting you to the FTC, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and anyone else who regulates false advertising.

Lets start with the ad

It turns out that the radio ad is just the audio of the television ad, so we are fortunate enough to have a sample ad right here.  I will later confirm that these ads are the same by acquiring a transcript of the ad, but that may take a bit of time.

Okay, the misinformation and lies.  Normally I start with the scam elements of an ad, but this one is so bad I will go right to the misinformation and lies:

• There is a new way to lose weight that is as fast and healthy as any diet program.
• Scientifically developed detox and weight loss system that helps cleanse your body and helps lose the weight that some professionals say is stored in our body for years.
• Months of failed dieting may be equal to a week of Banital.
• Banital eliminates the weight you can’t lose with starvation diets or exhausting exercise.
• You don’t have to take it forever.

These are straight up, stone cold lies.  At the very least there is NO EVIDENCE at all, anywhere for any one of these claims.  At the most, they are ridiculous lies hiding behind attempts to mitigate the lies with ‘mays’ and ‘some professionals say’, or even worse, some backwards grammar so they actually end up saying that the product is useless…

Let’s look at each of these statements:

There is a new way to lose weight that is as fast and healthy as any diet program.

It isn’t new, fast or healthy and it will not help you lose weight.  There is currently little or no evidence that taking any supplement will assist in long term weightloss and there is a mountain of evidence that eating a balanced diet with regular exercise will result in significant weightloss.  The fastest healthiest diet program is eating well (The Zone Diet) and getting regular exercise.

Scientifically developed detox and weight loss system that helps cleanse your body and helps lose the weight that some professionals say is stored in our body for years.

Although there is some testing on individual ingredients in this supplement, there IS NO scientific evidence that THIS product works, or that scientists created the blend or that there is anything normally associated with science used in the development of this product.  I bet I could find a 4 leaf clover in this companies office easier than a scientist.  Further, there are probably people who are professionals in some fields-but not gastroenterologists- who believe incorrectly that we store pounds of waste in our intestines and need it cleansed, but this is misleading enough to be a lie.  There are professionals who believe that the world is ending tomorrow, that there are unicorns and fairies and that Greedo shot first in the original Star Wars.  The thing is, people are nuts, at least some are and you can always find someone who will say some crazy stuff, especially for money.  So, I can pretty much say, professionals say ‘…’ fill in the blank and be right, but if I am implying that what these professionals say is true, well then, I am probably a liar and most certainly scamming you.

No gastroenterologists say that there is weight stored in our body for years that a cleanse will clean out.  That is one of the oldest detox scams in the world and it has been thoroughly and completely debunked.  You can read about it here, here and here.  Experts don’t say anything about this stored ‘weight’ (unless they are referring to actual fat that has been stored, although what the hell a cleanse would have to do with that is beyond me), it is only con artists and quacks who say anything about this stored weight.

You could read the sentence to suggest that the weight stored in our bodies is in the fat cells (which is true), although why only some professionals would claim this is odd in its own right because we have known for a long time that this is precisely how weight is stored in the body.  As well, again, I don’t think any professionals say that Banital could get rid of that fat.

Months of failed dieting may be equal to a week of Banital.

This one is true, but only because of the poor logic of the sentence.  Months of FAILED dieting are probably exactly equal to Banital because the diets are a failure.  What does this tell you they think of Banital.  That is right, by the manufacturers own claims BANITAL = FAILED DIETING.  Actually, they don’t even promise this much, couching it in a may!

Banital eliminates the weight you can’t lose with starvation diets or exhausting exercise

Either this is a genius bit of logic, or it is an outright lie.  Logically, what is the ‘the weight you can’t lose with starvation diets or exhausting exercise’.  To be honest, there is no weight that you can’t lose that way-if we take weight to mean excess body fat.  Therefore, once again, (substitute no weight for the weight you can’t lose with starvation diets and you get) Banital elimates ’no weight’.  Genius logic.  The implication is that there is weight that you can’t eliminate with diets and exercise, using such pointed words as starvation and exhausting, but Banital will get rid of it.  I call Bullshit on that one.

You don’t have to take it forever

Again, very insidious implication here.  The implication is that you don’t have to take it forever to get the desired results, but that simply isn’t true.  The ingredients in Banital, all claim to act by speeding metabolism, blocking marcronutrients and controlling cravings.  As soon as you stop taking it, you go back to a slow metabolism, absorbing macronutrients and uncontrolled cravings.  There are no studies to talk about the long term effects of any of these ingredients and certainly NOTHING in the literature to suggest that the ingestion of these ingredients creates permanent long lasting effects.  Mind you, if you read the sentence literally, no, you don’t have to take it forever.  You can stop any time.

So, the claims are the same crap we keep getting

Supplements may work for long term weightloss.  There are some promising supplements in the Banital product.  In fact, there are tons of natural herbal ingredients that are associated or rumored to be associated with or traditional used for weight issues.  The evidence behind them isn’t great, there is NOWHERE NEAR enough science to even sell these herbs as a weight loss product, and certainly, in my opinion it is lying to say that these herbs make Banital, ‘The Ultimate Weight Loss System’.  Please keep this in mind with any supplements you see.  Until there are enough studies to back up the claims, don’t give them your money and certainly, NEVER give them your credit card numbers!!  If there are promising studies on supplements, I will gladly publish them, but remember, even the most promising supplement will probably not compare to a reasonable eating and exercising routine.

First, lets find out who makes Banital

Banital is manufactured by TBSI in Naples Florida.

Who is behind TBSI?  According to Wiki it is Timothy B Schliesser.  Who is Timothy B Schliesser?  The answer to this one will astound you.

There is a Timothy B Schliesser who was arrested for running a puppy mill.  link, but that was in Somerset County in Pennsylvania back in 1999… could this be the same man.  According to the story, David Holtzman was his accomplice.

Two Somerset County dog breeders will appear in federal court on Aug 11, 2005 to answer to charges that they transported sick puppies to unsuspecting buyers in other states and made up a fake veterinarian to help them do it.

From December 1999 through August 2000, the men advertised in magazines, newspapers and on the Internet to sell “healthy” English bulldog, cockapoo and pug puppies, court documents state. The animals had infections, infestations and other health defects.

State and federal officials have labeled the two as puppy mill operators. Pennsylvania has long been considered a hot-bed for puppy mills. Lancaster County is believed to have the highest concentration of puppy mills of any county in the nation.

Read more: Animal Abuse: Puppy mill – Somerset, PA | Pet-Abuse.Com Animal Cruelty Database http://www.pet-abuse.com/cases/5510/PA/US/#ixzz1lm2t0a43

A search for David Hotzman and Timothy B Schliesser turn up the two man as associates, now located in Naples Florida.  What are the odds of that.

http://www.whitepages.com/name/David-A-Holtzman/Naples-FL/3vn1wdy

http://www.whitepages.com/name/Timothy-Schliesser/Naples-FL

Hmmm… an upstanding group of young men if I were to be asked. It does not appear that either of these men are scientists, certainly not in the any fields associated with human metabolism.  As well, there background doesn’t point so much to weight loss expert or even individuals interested in weight loss techniques…  I think it is important to know about their background though because to me, someone who runs a puppy mill, who is charged and convicted more than once…  Well that person is about as low as humans go.  They have sold their souls and in my opinion, once you have sold that, it is very hard to get it back.

Now on to the radio station.

Virgin 95.3

Okay, so far it is hard to be mad at these guys (but I am getting there).  I called up and demanded a copy of the ad or a transcript.  They said they were not allowed to send out the ad itself, but they would be happy to sit down and transcribe the entire commercial for me, but this might take a little while.  Shortly thereafter I got an email saying that they were not allowed to send me a copy of the ad because of ‘Copyright issues’.  By the way, this is the reason that the SOPA laws were so poorly written and so open to abuse.  The makers of Banital could claim that I have violated their copyright by including parts of their ad on my site, even though in every way that ad is part of the public record and in no way could me reviewing it be seen as copyright infringement.  Still, if SOPA were around they could have my website shut down just for claiming that it was.  Even without SOPA, they tried to stop me from reviewing their ad by claiming that it was a copyright issue.  It is just insane.

So, the radio station was going to get them to call me to discuss my issues.  I actually did get call from the company rather quickly but apparently they didn’t understand what I was asking for because instead of getting anyone in charge, I spoke with the office manager who was under the impression that I was a disgruntled customer who had contacted the radio station for a refund after not being able to get one on their phone line.  A little side note here, but I often call the refund phone lines of these companies (when they are 1-800 lines) and I have yet to get through to one agent.  Seriously, not one.

I don’t know if you are aware, but to get Visa approval to accpet the credit card on a website as a business, you have to jump through a lot of hoops.  You need to have all sorts of policies written and phone numbers posted.  Funny thing though, Visa apparently never checks any of those numbers.  Makes me think they are probably liable for losses and damages when the Attorney General ends up going after these companies who bill for repeat services that were never asked for and products that people didn’t order.  Seriously, not one call has ended up with a person on the other end of the line.  I did call the Banital line as well, but of course, the line went dead after a little while.

In any case, I wasn’t a disgruntled purchaser but a person with 2 questions.  First, could I have a transcript of their ad and second, what is their DIN number (I will get to that in a second).  The person informed me they were only an office manager and they would speak with the boss and get back to me.  No surprise that is all that I ever heard from Banital.

As for the DIN Number, well, being a Canadian I am aware that although we have ridiculously lax laws here regarding what can be sold as a health food, they aren’t quite as lax as in the states.  There is one additional hoop you have to jump through in Canada and that is your DIN number.  A DIN (Drug Identification Number) number is strictly for drugs, but the alternate for health products is the Natural Product Number (NPN) or Homeopathic Medicine Number (DIN-HM). You can read all about it here.  You don’t have to do as much for one of these as a DIN, but you do need to prove the efficacy of your product with respect to your claims.  Not such a bad little requirement I think.  Like in the states though, as long as you use ‘generally agreed as safe’ ingredients you don’t have to test for safety.  That is fine by me.  Still, these aren’t hard to get and a bunch of scams are still advertised here, just not as many.

So, a health food cannot be advertised in Canada and a Radio Station cannot advertise it if it doesn’t have a NPN or DIN-HM.  Which brings us to a little problem.  After some searching through the readily available online database of health products, Banital appeared absent.  I spoke with the Radio Station again, and although they were helpful, I told them that I couldn’t find any evidence of Banital having a DIN.  That was the last I heard from them.  The person in charge of the actual advertising account at Astral in Toronto never returned a call and Virgin stopped responding.  They had been helpful right from the beginning but I guess they never checked for a DIN number (something that they are required to do).

Stage 3, The Reporting

So, with no one at Banital responding to me and Astral Media shut up tighter than a drum (which really kind of sucks because the people at Virgin 95.3 were really nice and I was thinking of contacting them when I am ready to start promoting my book but now they won’t even answer my calls so I guess that is another bridge burned), I had to move on to phase 3.  I wrote to a bunch of Canadian agencies about this product being advertised on the Radio and I got a lot of immediate responses.  I was kind of excited.  Until I read a little deeper into the responses like this one from Advertising Standards Canada:

My complaint to Health Canada came up with this response:

Dear Mr. Vaughan,

Thank you for contacting Health Canada regarding Banital.  Your correspondence has been forwarded to the Drug Compliance Verification and Investigation Unit (DCVIU), as we coordinate compliance verification and investigation activities involving health products.

Banital does not have the marketing authorization for sale in Canada.  The Health Products and Food Branch Inspectorate is committed to verifying complaints regarding the quality or safety of health products, however, we require more information in order to pursue the matter further. Please visit the following web link to read our Guide on “How to Submit a Consumer Complaint”. This guide details what information is needed to process a complaint, and where to submit it depending on your location.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/compli-conform/prob-report-rapport/gui_44_consumer_consommateur_cp-pc-eng.php

The Inspectorate is committed to verifying complaints from consumers regarding the quality or safety of health products. Due to the high volume of complaints received, they are prioritised according to the risk to health they may pose on the general public. In other words, higher risk incidents are given priority.

For more information, please contact the Inspectorate program, British Columbia Region using the following contact information:

Inspectorate Program, British Columbia Region
Email: insp_woc-coo@hc-sc.gc.ca
Telephone: 604-666-3350
Toll free: 1-800-267-9675
Assistant Telephone : 604-666-3149
Facsimile: 604-666-3149

Regards,

Drug Compliance Verification and Investigation Unit / Unité de vérification de la conformité et d’enquêtes sur les médicaments
Health Products and Food Branch Inspectorate / Inspectorat de la Direction générale des produits de santé et des aliments
250 Lanark Avenue, (A.L.2003B), Ottawa, ON, K1A 0K9

And so on… I am not even sure who handles the complaints, or if they have seen the complaint.  I have no idea if it has further to go up a ladder or if it is there.  It is clear that I was right, they shouldn’t have been advertising.  Apparently this isn’t an advertising standards issue, which I don’t understand…  I don’t know whose issue it is.  At first I was pleased to get agreement that their product isn’t licensed for sale in Canada, and such immediate and vehement responses, but then I realized people are very happy to quickly move this issue off of their desk.  The thing is, it has been almost a month and I have no idea whose desk it is on now.

Of course, at the end of the day, no one is going to get in trouble, nothing is going to happen and I will feel like I wasted a lot of time.  The good news though, I haven’t heard a Banital ad since.  Maybe I have helped with that, or maybe people are smart enough to know that it is crap here and they pulled the ads because it wasn’t selling.  I don’t know which option is more appealing, but they are both good.  Another little thought to leave you with about the people behind Banital.  I check out their privacy policy and this is what I discovered:

Privacy Policy

Well here at least, Banital steps up.

We only collect personally identifiable information about you via this website when you provide it in connection with a request for a product, service, or information.

Oh, wait a minute… did I say steps up…  I meant these guys will sell you out in a heartbeat.  Afterall, they did operate puppy mills!  Seriously, they knowingly shipped sick puppies through the mail with forged veterinary documents saying they were fine…

We may also share personally identifiable information with marketing partners or other direct marketers, so they can send you notices about products or services that may be of interest to you.  Our website may offer links to and from other third party sites. These third parties have separate data collection and privacy practices independent from ours, and thus we cannot be responsible for their policies or activities. Please contact those third parties directly if you have questions about their privacy policies.

Do not give anyone your private information before reading the privacy policy.  This says they can sell your email address to junk mail suppliers and they told you they were going to do it before they even did.

Finally, I will keep you in the loop with any updates on this story, although to tell you the truth I doubt there will be any.  I will be sending this to the FTC as well as the Attorney General’s office in Florida.  Again, I doubt anything will come of it.  By the way, I told the radio station that I was going to be writing this.  I said that I would like to portray them in the best light possible as they had been so up front with me.  I explained that right now it looked like they got greedy and didn’t check out the ad for a product that was making claims that were ridiculous, failing to do a simple search for a product ID number before cashing the cheque and putting them on the air.  I held this report for 2 weeks for them to respond.  Nothing.  Oh well.  I did try.

The Vibro Belt

I honestly thought we were done with these items.  I can say without a shadow of doubt that this is a nearly useless item that will do nothing to help you get a six pack or a toned ass. The ad on the website says that you can look like this, while showing a guy with rock hard, six pack abs, with the vibro-belt professional toning system*.  Through out the ad it tells you it will tone, firm and strengthen, your upper, middle  lower abs and obliques, as well as your thighs, hips, back and buns*. The fact is, if we found the model with the six-pack abs, there is not one chance in 1,000,000,000 that he used the vibro-belt to get those abs.

Just wear the vibro-belt while you are working, cooking and cleaning*.  Nothing could be more convenient.

*’Vibrobelt System requires use of Nutirtion Guide and Walk IT OFF CD to obtain best results’

In fact, they go so far as to tell you to stop struggling with hard to use exercise equipment…. Seriously people… have we gotten so pathetic??!?!  They think we have.  They think that we can’t even manage to lift a weight, as that process is beyond our skill level. I am honestly sickened by this statement.

The science

There are apparently 3 types of belts.

• Vibrating,
• Heating/Sauna Belts
• Electrical stimulation belts.

There is no science on the first 2 types of belts.  That includes this ridiculous device.  The 3rd type, the electrical stimulation belts can achieve some results.  A proper electrical stimulation device can produce an increase in abdominal strength and endurance, but they have no impact on weight loss.  The results aren’t very impressive.  In the attached study which has showed the best results for one of these devices, the study group who used the device for 2 solid months improved their curl ups by 100% (and the control group improved by 28%).  Think about this for a moment.  The belt only helped them to double their curl ups.  If you did sit ups or crunches once a week for 2 months you would be able to do a lot more than double your curl ups in 2 months (if you don’t do those types of exercises now).  The control group improved by 28%!! It is theorized that they had this improvement just from doing curl ups 3 times in the 8 weeks!!  In essence what I am saying is that the least amount of working out shows much bigger improvements than even the most effective belts.  There are other problems with EMS belts.  According to Livestrong.com

Electrical signals are unable to penetrate through deep fat layers, making even effective belts useless if you are very overweight or obese. Studies tested participants with body mass indexes of 30 or less. Also, the Food and Drug Administration has received complaints concerning burns, bruising and skin irritation from using ab belts. These products can also interfere with defibrillators or pacemakers. If you use a heart device, do not use an abdominal belt.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/385482-is-a-vibrating-belt-reducing-belly-fat/#ixzz1lGWddLz7

Here is a review from a user on Youtube

There is science on whole body vibration in conjunction with training.  The results show that there are actual increases in many positive outcomes.  You can read a summary here.  Note that there is no evidence of weight loss with vibration technologies and they have been in existence since the steam engine.  Summary here.

So, we are now all up to speed on what pieces of crap these are.  Still, if you want to buy them, you can buy them out of the back of the factory for only $33.00.  Check here.

Why I am Really Pissed

Obviously you and I both know that these ‘slimming belts’ are crap and there is little to no evidence of actual slimming.  Certainly when compared to real life exercise, the fare terribly, embarrassingly.  You knew that before you even saw my review and quite honestly so did I.  That isn’t the purpose of this entry.  Why I am upset is that I received an offer to buy this belt from none other than EverydayHealth.com.  Many of you, I would daresay, most of you have come into contact with Everyday Health (they claim to reach 28.9% of the health audience, more than 28 million unique monthly visitors).  They are a ‘leading’ provider of online health information (Although I should have put the quotes on health information, but both leading and health information are highly questionable).  They have acquired (or launched) many of the branded health sites on the internet.  For example, if you thought that say, JillianMichaels.com was her website, you would have been wrong.  It is an Everyday Health Product.  She either sold it or never owned it, just licensing her name.  I could care less which is true, but I do care that to me, this shows a genuine lack of care for you the health consumer and a genuine concern over her wealth.  Now, they don’t just own Jillian Michaels website, they also own, Joy Bauer, Dr. Laura Berman, Denise Austin, Ellie Krieger, The South Beach Diet, The Sonoma Diet, Suzanne Somers diet and dozens of other sites.  They put out a newsletter, which is remarkably impressive given the diverse opinions of the websites that they control.  Should they put out information about hormone therapies, organic foods or exercise or all of the above…  You can find the complete link of websites here.

This may not offend you, but think about it.  What if you were reading my website and trusting my opinions and later on you find that I have sold my opinions, my entire site to a company that sold, let’s say  weight loss belts.  Of course, my entries would have changed (after all, a company owns my website, I may not even have editorial control over it any longer.  I may not even know what is being posted), but you wouldn’t know all of this.  How many people out there know that Jillian Michaels doesn’t even own her own website.  Do you feel betrayed?  I know I would if I had expected any integrity from her.

In any case, look at the advertising and marketing programs these people offer.  It almost seems like they are better at marketing than they are at health…  Not only do you have the myriad of marketing programs, you also have access to insider information.  Want to know how people use calorie counting tools?  Pdf right here, or my favorite, Delivering a Mom: How Today’s New Moms Learn, Decide and Buy!    This is awesome information that they gleaned from their users.  What I love most about their corporate website is that the 4 executives mentioned on the page include the 2 co-founders and the EVP, Sales, Scott Wolf and SVP, Sales, PR and Corporate Branding, Laura Klein.  This group definitely knows what is important.  Neither of the 2 founders are involved in the health side of the business either.

Still, there is nothing wrong with a health conglomerate, and make no mistake, this is a business and as such, having business people in charge is probably wise.  Unfortunately, there really isn’t a lot to sell to be fit and healthy.  Branding is clearly the winning method that they are employing, but free sites that earn revenue by advertising seem quite popular too.

The Crux of the Issue

The problem with all of this is quite simple.  You would have trusted Jillian Michaels website because you trust Jillian Michaels (A mistake I once made myself).  Buy why would you trust Jillian Michaels website when she doesn’t even own it and her involvement is unknown?  Furthermore, why would you trust Everyday Health at all.  What makes you think that they know anything about health or care about your health.  They appear to be a corporation that cares only about money.  It isn’t fair to say that all corporations care only about money, so you might think that it isn’t fair for me to say that this one is a greedy corporation that cares more about how much money it can get from you than it does about how it can help you, but you would be wrong.

How do I know you would be wrong?  Do you remember that Image of the Vibro-Belt that I showed at the beginning of the article?  Well, that image came with an offer from Everday Health.  This message was simply embedded into an email newsletter.

When you click on this link you get taken to Health Deals.  You see, Everday Health has launched a new newsletter a la Groupon.  They appear to have a targeted and featured deal/coupon mail out called Health Deals, Living Well for Less.  You can sign up, put in your location and be mailed Deals just like Groupon, only for health.  What did they choose as a health product?  Why, they chose a 50% off coupon for the Vibrating Muscle Toning Belt.  They like it so much they have even given it the green stamp of ‘Great for Fitness Revolution’ seal of approval.  I have no idea what that means, but I bet it costs a little more…

In the description supplied by EVERYDAY HEALTH, are included the following 4 claims which I would say are all at the most bald faced lies, but are, at the very least,  in no way proven:

• The Vibro-Belt utilizes a unique, oscillating massage action to effectively and quickly tone up the muscles in your body.
• It’s the smart and easy way to get the body you want from the comfort of your own home!
• The best part is that you only need to use your belt for 10-minutes a day to help you get the toned muscles of your dreams!
• So, put an end to the winter gluttony and start getting a rock-hard body with Vibro-Belt for just minutes a day!

Conclusion

Some people are wrong about fitness.  Some people think that you can supplement your way to health or cleanse yourself to the body of your dreams.  Some people really believe this.  They are wrong, but they truly believe this.  They are generally on track with the bulk of their beliefs but have some weird and hence highly publicized ‘angle’ that makes them unique (and subsequently wrong).  These people at least mean well.  They are bad, but they aren’t the worst.

When they give you some improper advice, they believe it and they live it.  The bigger problem is the people who are selling you things they wouldn’t use and ideas they don’t believe in.  Here is the owner of Jillian Michaels website selling you a Vibration belt!!?!?!  Think about that.  You are offered the opportunity to get the newsletter from Everday Health when you sign up on Jillian Michaels website.

If a company is willing to sell you a sketchy product you cannot trust them.  Not at all and not in anything they say afterwards.  These people aren’t wrong with what they think will help you, but instead they have chosen their pocketbook over your health.  Those are not the people you want to rely on.  Exercise and eating well will be the cornerstones to your good health.  You need to learn what those truly mean and find ways to incorporate them into your life.  That is the help you need, not a company that will send out coupons for infomercial products.  What next, a half price Ab Circle Pro…

Reblogged from Comfort in the Uncomfortable:

• 
• 

We’ve spent the last two  weeks of medical school in our Endocrinology Block.  Returning from a much-needed and  very restful break for the holidays, I was excited to be learning about a new system and expected the coming days  to be filled with discussion of those elusive glands and hormones I’d heard of, but never really knew exactly what  purpose they served. 

Read more… 916 more words

Julie Foucher TOTALLY Gets it! Read this entry from her and it should be clear to you as well. There is a HUGE gap for all of us. What does 'Exercise and Eat Well' mean to you? Not in general terms either, but in exact terms? If you can't answer this question you are not alone. The problem isn't the advice, 'eat well and exercise', the problem is knowing what eating well is, and what exercise is, and then having a blueprint to fit them into your life! You would be shocked at how few people actually know what eating well is and what exercise is. If you answer to the latter is 'gym 3x a week', you are probably wrong. I love Crossfit. If you can stick it out, it is the best workout on earth. There is nothing that can match it, but you have to be ready to work hard. I had to start down the road to fitness myself first before I would have ever been ready for Crossfit. It is remarkable how many diets and fitness regimes give you bizarre prescriptions for food to eat or give you a specific gym workout. These are terrible ways to get fit. Pick up 'You Are Not A Fit Person' or get the Couch 2 5K program and get started. Running 5k in 30 minutes is the base standard of fitness. If you are considerably overweight, have had injuries or are older, consider a walking program first. As always check with your doctor before taking up a program, and get his or her advice as to what you fitness level is.

So, for the last 2 days I have been sick as a dog.  I have the actual flu, the respiratory infection kind.  It sucks.  I am exhausted.  When I finally drag my ass out of bed and down the stairs I end up collapsing in front of the TV, where I recently discovered that there is nothing on daytime TV.  Shockingly, nothing!   In any case, while I was looking for something to watch I was fortunate enough to come across an ad for Lipozene….

I say fortunate because I like to stay abreast of the current scams… and this product has all of the hallmarks of a good scam.

For starters, the pitch:  You are fat, but it isn’t your fault, nothing you do seems to work.  There is a way that you can lose this weight and it is easy.  All you need to do is take a simple pill.  There is no risk to you and you can have their risk free 30 day offer if you just call.  There are excellent clinical studies with fat loss to back up these facts, all arranged by the Obesity Research Institute.

Obesity Research Institute

Wow, that sure does sound like an offer too good to refuse.  Lets do some research, starting at the Obesity Research Institute‘s webpage.  Okay, the fact that it is turns out to be a limited liability corporation with the name “the Obesity Research Institute” instead of actually being a research institute shouldn’t worry us, right?  And the pathetic website shouldn’t make us wonder if anyone at the institute has anything past a GED.  After all, it is a blank WordPress website with only the main paragraphs changed, not even the stock photo or the name of the entry, ‘Hello World’.  Still, what do we learn from this site?

Thanks to Lipozene’s manufacturers, consumers have an abundance of information about this product at their fingertips. First, they can learn about the ingredients. The main ingredient is Glucomannan, which is a 100 percent natural fiber made from the Konjac Root. Then they can learn about how it works—Glucomannan, which is a source of dietary fiber, in essence creates a sponge in the stomach that makes users feel fuller and eat less. And since it is 100 percent natural, it’s good to know that there are no known side effects. With all this and a little extra fiber that everyone needs, Lipozene makes a good choice for most dieters.

Okay, I don’t have a lot of confidence in them now that they are calling this an abundance of information, but otherwise, it appears to be true that they claim that their product is made up of this fibre from the Konjac Root.  In fact, Glucomannan is a water soluble fibre that can be found in any one of the many fibre pills on the market (here, here and at vitamin stores).  Of course it doesn’t list the other ingredients that keep this product together and give it its colouring…  Who doesn’t need 6 to 12 pills of stearic acid and FDC Blue #1, as well as ignoring the known side effects (see below).

It is important to understand that weight loss supplement makers such as Obesity Research Institute LLC have developed specific instructions for how their products should be taken, and anyone who takes a weight loss product should follow the instructions to avoid any potential risks. This is why it is so important to learn about the suggested dosage from the source—in this case, it is one or two capsules up to three times daily before meals, totaling no more than six capsules.

I love how it is important to understand that weight loss supplement makers such as Obesity Research Institute LLC have developed specific instructions for how their products should be taken and after all of this, the instructions are take one or two capsules up to three times a day…  Hmm… I am glad they have an institute now.  The funny point is that they may have missed the most important instructions.  According to Wikipedia:

A health advisory was released by Health Canada stating the following: “natural health products containing the ingredient glucomannan in tablet, capsule or powder form, which are currently on the Canadian market, have a potential for harm if taken without at least 8 ounces of water or other fluid. The risk to Canadians includes choking and/or blockage of the throat, esophagus or intestine, according to international adverse reaction case reports. It is also important to note that these products should NOT be taken immediately before going to bed.”^[10]

I assume that this risk doesn’t only pertain to Canadians, but maybe we Canadians have freakishly small esophagi…. So what else do we know from this website?

If the information from the Obesity Research Institute isn’t enough, there are also clinical studies to substantiate these weight loss claims. The more information consumers have, the better weight loss choices they can make.

Do people really believe that if they say something like, ‘If the information isn’t enough’ we will actually think there was any valuable information at all?  In any case, here we see it again, the Clinical Studies!  Excellent.  You know, the Obesity Research Institute is an excellent place to locate your studies, and they do advise us that the more information consumers have the better, so they would share with us… wouldn’t they?   Lets check them out…  Okay, well the studies aren’t here at their one page website.  So, is this all we know about the Obesity Research Institute?

Well not exactly…. but I will get back to that in a minute.  In the meantime, I am going to look a little harder for these studies.  They should be at the main website and that is pretty easy to find, it is on the commercial after all.

Lipozene.com

Hmm… Limited time offers… tons of banners… Images of unattainably thin stomachs… free offers… yep, this site does not let us down at all.  It has all of the trimmings of a scam website.  Oh, and the risk free trial, well that just means that they have a 30 day money back guarantee, which you already knew….

My favorite part of their website though is this page.  It is under their REVIEWS section too!

If you’re doing your homework before deciding which weight loss product to use, you may have come across a number of positive and negative reviews on Lipozene and other weight loss products

Of course they brilliantly hide their glowing review website under the link of weight loss product, and this takes you to Lipozene.org, a totally unbiased set of reviews…  What idiots…  I also love how they hide the negative reviews right after the positive.  Do they think we won’t find the negative reviews?   They don’t even post any positive reviews on their site, instead, they go on to defend themselves:

If you’ve encountered negative Lipozene reviews, it’s important that you take them with a grain of salt and consider the source. Many web sites that claim to be diet product review sites are actually disguised affiliate sites created for the sole purpose of advertising or selling the affiliate’s products. These sites are obviously biased and do not always give you the whole truth.

Most of the negative Lipozene reviews fail to consider all the facts. People have different body types, for starters, and weight loss results will always be different for each individual. Products such as Lipozene and other weight loss products must also be taken as directed over a period of time to see results. No weight loss product, no matter how effective, can provide drastic results overnight.

If you go to their even more defensive page, called ‘complaints’, you get these tidbits:

• What about complaints that are online? Lipozene investigates all complaints, and its customer service’s goal is to keep EVERY customer happy. The truth is, not everything you can find on the Internet is true. Many customer complaints have been investigated online and actually many of them originate from people who never purchased Lipozene products. Often, competitors blog negative comments or people are upset their credit cards were declined.
• Many people who submit complaints to these supposedly unbiased review sites say they were ripped off or that the product didn’t work. The fact is that most of them never received the product because their credit cards were declined, or they never ordered it in the first place. Our customer service department has done the research to prove the facts behind these Lipozene complaints.

I love this.  The numerous complaints online are from people whose credit cards were declined!?!?  Seriously, you are going to try to convince us of that!??!  and. ya, sure they investigate all complaints.  What a waste of time, just do the research to see if your product works.  It isn’t the consumer fraud institute, it is the obesity research institute.  As well,  there are a lot of complaints!  I think it might be easier to find a weightloss pill that actually works than to investigate that many complaints!!   My favorites are from the youtube website that ORI (obesity research institute) clearly set up to sell their product:

I love any review that ends ‘I will see you in hell!!’  Which brings us to…

The Science

To make a long story short, there are no clinical studies on the website.  I went through it in detail.  I had no idea where they get the 78% of each pound lost is PURE BODY FAT or the 3.6 pounds lost in 8 weeks (which isn’t a lot to be honest).  The closest you will find on their site is:

Clinical trials: Clinical trials are organized studies that test the value of various treatments to support health and nutrition in human beings.

Yep, the definition of a clinical trial.  Well done.  Glad we could go to your website to find the actual definition of a clinical trial…  The thing is, trials have been done on glucomannan, so why not just link to some of those?  I did a quick search and I found all of the studies.  They are summarized in this meta-research here.  There are some studies that have found that glucomannan promotes small but significant weight loss when researchers were testing for weight loss (although some studies found that there was no difference between the glucomannan groups and the control groups), but even this tenuous result can be called into question when one realizes that when testing was done with glucomannan and weightloss was a secondary result (ie they were looking for other results first like improved cholesterol), they had no positive weight-loss results.

As you know, I absolutely feel that if a person promotes their product based upon clinical evidence and does not post that exact evidence to their website, then they are scamming you.  You need to be able to review the study for yourself before you make any decisions.  That is what makes clinical trials valuable.  The methods and results are listed so you know exactly what happened.  In the study that they are referring to in their add, the sample size was only 20 people!  That means in a double blind test only 10 were in each group.  The actual study can be found here.

The science in this case is still out.  There is no way that you could determine if glucomannan would be a good long term weight loss tool from the evidence above, it seems unlikely as hell, but maybe slightly possible.  The weight loss is small, the number of subjects in all studies is ridiculously small and there are hazards associated with this product.  The reality is that for someone to call this the answer to your weightloss woes is bad.  Very bad.  Bordering on criminal, which brings us back to the Obesity Research Institute.

Obesity Research Institute and the FTC

The first thing I like to check out with these corporations that have deceivingly therapeutic names is if they have run afoul of the FTC.  It seems that they always do and the Obesity Research Institute once again does not let us down.

On June 20, 2005, the Obesity Research Institute LLC, without admitting any wrong doing, entered into a stipulated final agreement with the FTC to the tune of $1.5 million.

The most interesting part of the injunction is this:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants, directly or through any corporation, partnership, subsidiary, division, trade name, or other device, and their officers, agents, servants, representatives, employees, and all persons or entities in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this Order, by personal service or otherwise, in connection with the manufacturing, labeling, advertising, promotion, offering for sale, sale, or distribution of FiberThin, MetaboUp, Propolene, Excelerene, or any substantially similar product, are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from making any representation, in any manner, expressly or by implication, including through the use of a trade name or endorsement, that any such product:

A. Causes rapid or substantial weight loss without the need to reduce caloric intake or increase physical activity;

B. Enables users to lose as much as 8 pounds or more per month without the need to reduce caloric intake or increase exercise;

C. Works for all users; or

D. Causes substantial weight loss through blocking the absorption of fat or calories.

You might think that the biggest question is whether Lipozene is a substantially similar product, but that was answered in the definitions section:

“Substantially similar product” shall mean any product that contains one or more of the following active ingredients: glucomannan, propol, konjac, konjac root, chromium, green tea, guarana seed, oolong tea, kola nut, bitter orange, cayenne, platycodon grandiflorum, or any extracts of these ingredients.

Well, yes, it appear that not only did the Obesity Research Institute get into trouble with the FTC, but if I am reading the injunction correctly, it appears that they are in trouble again.  You can read the ads and see the website from the first time they trotted out this product here.    You can see they went a little further in their claims back then, with bizarre statements that the product sponges up up to 400 calories of fat a day.  They also supplied the names of pretty much every study ever done on gluccomannan and konjac root.

Not only did they get in trouble with the FTC, but they recently (October of 2010) settled a class action lawsuit on the very product that they are currently advertising, Lypozene, as well as another product they agreed to stop manufacturing, Zylotrim!  The class action case can be found here.  On top of the money that they agreed to pay, they had to alter their advertising to eliminate the use of the following statements:

• Lipozene® should be considered before “liposuction”
• “Lipozene® is backed by 12 clinical studies”
• “amazing weight loss”
• “dramatic weight loss”
• any claim that single order use of Lipozene® leads to long-term weight loss or that weight loss will be maintained after discontinuing use of Lipozene®
• “begin to uncover lean muscle”
• “begin to reveal a flat tummy, ripped abs, tight buns, and firm thighs”
• the phrase “Fit & Lean with Lipozene®” shall be used solely in connection with the current Club program and not in any other context nor in any television advertising.

So, who are the people behind the Obesity Research Institute?  Although you can’t find who owns the company by seeing who owns the website, as they hide their names under the domainsbyproxy service offered by GoDaddy, which I consider remarkably scammy to start with.  The class action lawsuit names Bryan Corlett as well as the FTC judgement.  The FTC judgement also names Henny Den Uijl, James Ayres and Dr. Jonathan M. Kelley.  According to the FTC:

The FTC’s complaint named FiberThin, LLC and Obesity Research Institute, LLC; their owners, Henny Den Uijl and Bryan Corlett; and the “expert endorsers,” James Ayres and Jonathan M. Kelley, M.D., as defendants.

Henny Den UiJl & Bryan Corlett

This could be the worst of the worst list of supplement scams!  I was trying to figure out the names of these products (>why Cyvita? this is what I found.  It is an herbal erectile disfunction pill.  What are the names of the 2 most popular erectile disfunction drugs?  Why Cialis and Livitra…  They are running the exact same scam with Cyvita as Lipozene and it gets worse.

Try Relactia….

This is again, the same EXACT scam, same price, same 3o day risk free, same act now and get 2 packs and yes, even same CLINICALLY PROVEN with no clinical proof offered, and that is just the beginning of where this one has gone wrong.  Notice the doctor, Dr. Craig Uhl.  Well, he is actually the actor, Craig Michaels, a man who apparently plays Dr. Craig Uhl in numerous television appearances.   Apparently only Cyvita and Excelerene are currently on the market, so they haven’t yet committed a crime with their Relactia video.  That said, they are setting up a Relactia test website for sales and it was through this website that I found that they also own Appetrol LLC.

Appetrol LLC  markets Appetrol (fittingly enough), another weightloss supplement (I recommend that you don’t go to the website for this one because it has a bunch of pop ups that prevent you from leaving, but if you do risk it, you will see the same claims of clinical research-same definition of clinical study at the bottom of the page, same pricing and same risk free offer.  They even offer the same free bottle of MetaboUp).

I wish I was done with who Henny Den Uijl and Bryan Corlett are, or more correctly what they are up to, but the list just goes on.  They apparently co-own a company called Market Financing LLC and for the life of me,
I cannot find out what that company does.   Another company they own together is Beau Cheveux, which sells a product called Beau Cheveux’s Nutra Renew, which is an hair treatment product.

The same cookie cutter website, same deal and same price, just $29.95 (which does seem quite cheap when they throw in a hair straightener).  According to the website, ‘The scientists at Beau Cheveux discovered rare natural ingredients that penetrate deep into the hair fiber.’  The thing is, Henny and Bryan aren’t scientists and although I am not going to call them liars, I think I would be less surprised to see the Easter Bunny at Beau Cheveux than I would be to see a scientist (especially because I don’t think Beau Cheveux even occupies a physical place in the exclusive sense, rather than the legal entity sense-2032 CORTE DEL MOGAL STE 110).  I love how it is Beau Cheveux BEVERLY HILLS as well.  They are located in Carlsbad California, a beautiful place to be sure, but not Beverly Hills.

Continuing down this dark rabbit hole, we find that Brian Corlett owns Pounds Lost LLC (this one may not be in partnership with Henny), yet ANOTHER weight loss dietary supplement!  This one though suggests that you could lose 19  pounds and up to 3 and 1/2 inches off your waist!  That is a real no-no by the way for the FTC.  It is wording like that that will get you charged.  Also statements like, ‘Just take pounds lost each day and start losing weight’ really get the FTC upset.  I am not going to go into the MASSIVE problems with the pounds lost system, but there is one major difference between it and the others.  It offers you one free week, plus free shipping if you buy the first week for only $1.95.  Sounds good, but once you go to place the order you get the small print:

You’ll receive a full 2 week supply of Pounds Lost with our Buy 1 week supply for only $1.95 and get an additional week FREE. POUNDS LOST normally SELLS for $4 dollars PER DAILY SUPPLY but if you love your initial results with your 2 WEEK supply– and you’ll want to continue losing weight –you are scheduled to receive a two month supply of Pounds Lost 12 days after your two week supply ships – it will be billed in one monthly payment of $89.99 plus a $9.95 shipping fee billed the day your order is shipped. That’s 60% percent off the retail price. It’s our commitment to helping you reach your weight loss goals.

As you will begin to see shortly with these guys, for some reason $89.99 is a magic billing number.

In addition to pounds lost, there also appears to have been a pounds off nutrition bar (although I get an account suspended message whenever I try to log on now).  As well, there does appear to be some legitimate business in Bryan Corlett’s past as well, although this was ill fated.

James Ayres and Dr. Jonathan M. Kelley

As for the ‘expert endorsers’, there is some interesting stuff there as well.  James Ayres may very well be the Jim Ayres of the Xyngular MLM scheme.  I could write for days about this one.  They sell a Core 4 system.   Ironically, the pitch he gives for one of the 4 products, Cheat, is the same pitch that the FTC found so offensive (25% of calories that you eat can be trapped and absorbed).  I am sure I will have a chance to explore and write about Xyngular at some future time, but I have already covered so much ground in researching this one silly little product it is surprising, even to me.  The biggest surprise will be that I probably haven’t touched on half of the products that they sell!

As for Dr. Jonathan Kelly, no wonder they went after him.  Apparently he is an anesthesiologist from that same part of California.  It seems likely that his is our man as both of them of them were educated at Harvard.  I am not sure why in the world an anesthesiologist would be supplying expert advice on diet pills, but that is certainly not in his area of expertise.

Conclusion

First, there is very little evidence that glucomannan will help you lose weight.  It isn’t a miracle pill and it does have negative side effects.  I wouldn’t take it.  If I did take it though, I would go to a health food store and buy it for a fraction of the price that these guys charge you.  I personally would never knowingly order from any business run by these guys.  The biggest problem with Lipozene is the myriad of complaints of overbilling! From www.complaintsboard.com:

• doesn’t work/won’t refund what was not ordered  I ordered the TRIAL of Lipozene for $29. 95 w/free S&H for my daughter. Then they sent two more 60 count bottles & charged me a total of $101. 85. I called to get a refund, as I had NOT ordered any other products. They told me I was out of luck!! This company is running a scam. Nowhere on there website did they state they would send out, ahead of time, any other products…
• Den Lipozene - just a plain lost!
  I have been disputing with Den Lipozene for months now. I hung the phone up on the initial conversation because the initial representative wouldn’t take no for an answer. After she continued to place my order, I was charged $31. 30 and shipped a mess box full of things. I sent the package return to sender through the post office…
• Unauthorized billing
  I have tried to cancel my Lipozene billing, the company said it would be done. They LIE. I am still getting charges on my Charge card. I have to dispute them every month. Do not order this product. It doesn’t work and you can’t get out like they say you can. MPW…
• They won’t stop taking money!
  I have called them a total of 4 times already and each time I am assured that they will cease and desist! However, each month I am charged an additional $19.95 and I’m at my wits end! How do i make these #@$%heads stop??!!
• Unauthorized billing  Lipozene ads say… 100% money back guarantee! They LIE. I tried their product and didn’t like it. I called with in the 30 day trial period and was told to package up the bottles, put a return number on the outside of the package, name and address and other information in the box and ship it Reno Navada using US Postal Service.
  Well, I did just that, but I didn’t have the opportunity to get to the post office when it was open, so it took me 2 weeks to get there. Still have plenty of time to ship the product back. I waited for my money for 2 months, nothing was sent to me.
  When I contacted the company about my refund they said I did not send the product back in time. I explained to them I had a receipt of when I shipped the product to them and they said it didn’t matter, they did not receive the product in 30 days from when I called them to return the product.
  They claim that it took over 10 days to receive the package from New York. When I asked the Post office official people, they looked up the time frame and said it shouldn’t have been more than 3-5 days. There were no storm or anything else happening that would have delayed delivery.
  I mailed the product back on May 20th they claim it was not relieved until June 5th so they conveniently say it was more than 30 days. I have called twice, I have written and they still refuse to give me my money back.
  I can’t believe a company who wants people to try their product is giving me such a hard time returning my money. I have never experienced such a disgrace regarding people’s money.

You would have to be an idiot to purchase a product like that when you get those warnings, but wait, it doesn’t stop there.  Try the Pounds Lost product:

• Charged my account  On April 23rd I saw an add on tv offering a product called”pounds lost” it is like an energy drink. The offer is buy one get like 6 free. While I was on the phone the automated system asked me if I wanted to prtake in several different offers and I said NO to everything. A week later I see a charge on my account for 69.64. I never said or agreed to them sending me another shipment. So of course my bank payed it and charged me and over draft of 29 dollars. When I called POUNDS LOST they said I should have looked at the invoice and called to tell them I didnt want this. The automated system didnt say anything about looking at the invoice. They say now that I have to wait till the shipment comes to me and I need to refuse it and when it gets back to them then they can refund the money but they will not cover my overdraft fee. I cannot believe this, this is illegal when you say no for them to charge. I will never order anything else off the telephone!
• Charged my account  I also was sent and charged for more than I ordered. I called the company (Pounds Lost, LLC). They said to return the product at my cost and they would refund. I said it was unacceptable that I should pay shipping and that I would get a chargeback from my credit card company. The rep asked me to hold and came back on the line saying he had just credited my account and I could either keep or send back the product.

Or Nutra Renew:

At the end of the day though, you should do your research.  The Lipozene privacy policy is bad, but check out this portion of the Appetrol privacy policy:

The information collected by our Site is used only for the limited purposes of processing orders, keeping you informed about your order status, for statistical purposes for improving our Site and to notify you of products or special offers that may be of interest to you. We will disclose your Personally Identifiable Information to third parties to charge your credit card, fill your order, deliver your order and deliver promotional emails to you from us. For example, we must release your credit card number to confirm payment; and release your mailing address information to the delivery service to deliver products that you ordered.
We may sell, trade or rent your personal information to others. However you may “opt-out” by following the instructions below. We may also provide Non-Personally Identifiable Information about our customers’ sales, traffic patterns and related Site information to third party advertisers, but these statistics do not include any Personally Identifiable Information. Moreover, we may release account information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to enforce or apply our Web Site Terms of Use Agreement or to protect the rights, property and safety of our users, others and ourselves.
We may transfer and otherwise share the information you provide to us available to select partners and third parties. This will allow these third parties to contact you and provide you offers and other information that they think will be valuable to you. However, if you would like us to stop providing your information to these third parties, please send a “do not share” request to mailings@appetrol.com.

In fact, if you thought you had to wait for a month or so to get sold out by ORI, by the way, you don’t.  They have already sold you, and the information that you supply by the time you reach the cash register.  Check out this pdf case study for SmartSell.  The Case Study is for the ORI… Yep, they get about $2 for each time someone clicks on an offer and ends up buying it.  The offer is totally unsolicited, and the person who buys the product has no idea that they have already been sold out to a third party company.  You can see how it works here (click on the demo link).

There is no way to describe how crappy it is that this company does everything it can to wring out every last penny from its potential customers.  You can find no shortage of complaints of this source on the internet as well.  I will close this entry with my favorite:

Lipozene ,Obesity Research Institute lipozene send you magazines you never ordered Pueblo Colorado

I see that I am not the only person who has had issues with FRAUD where LIPOZENE is concerned. I also had the same experience of having all types of magazines foisted upon me when i called to order their product. I declined all of the offers (and yeah, the ywasted ten minutes of my time, too, with this nonsense) and lo and behold a week later, a Gossip rag – US Weekly arrives on my door as they ordered the magazine for me anyway even though I DECLINED all of them. i wonder how many other magazines they ordered for me, as well?

When I called LIPOZENE to compalin, they denied that they were the ones that did it (but I just moved inot this house a month ago and no one had my address – I KNOW it was them) yet had the phone number I needed to cancel the order (if they didn’t order it, then how did they know who to tell me to call?). The phone number they gave me was (I beleive) for a company called “Magazine Direct” – 800-607-9869. I should add that it is impossible to speak to a live person at this number – they make you go through all their voice prompts. AMAZINGLY even after I went through the commands and cancelled the magazine that LIPOZENE ordered for me, they STILL tried to foist even more magazines on me through their automated system. If my intial expeience with LIPOZENE is any indication, I probably have 3 more magazines coming to me over this fiasco.

In closing, I will be returnign this product, UNOPENED as soon as it arrives and I will never ever do business with these snake oil salemen again. I called my credit card company and disputed the fraudulent charges made to my card, as well. BUYER BEWARE – particualry when it comes to Lipozene, fraudulent magazine order and companies that LIE to their customers. These people are scam artists – no other way to describe their actions.

Rippedoffinmo
Wildwood, Missouri
U.S.A.

I thought I could post a chapter from my book that will help you get started, maybe the Low Hanging Fruit Chapter or the How to Exercise Like A Fit Person chapter, and maybe I still will, but I don’t know if you will read a chapter here in this post.  It finally dawned on me what I could do, what I should do to help you get started on getting fit.

I am going to share with you how I started.  Not some boring recollection with instructions (which quite honestly is what my book is and it is good, but I may not be the best sales person I am thinking because I am not really describing it in a way that would make me go out and buy it), but instead, the actual blog entries that I wrote at the time.

A Little Background

You see, part of getting fit for me was finding the website 43things.com.   It is a fantastic site and I recommend that you check it out.  The idea is that you set up some goals for yourself.  You can pick anything, from playing in the world series of poker to climbing a mountain.  You can search through existing goals, or create your own.  You can find people with interesting goals and look through their lists and select some of their goals as your own.  You can set up to 43 goals, but that takes time.  The idea is that you can have a mix of long term goals, short term goals, fun goals, inspirational goals and reminder goals.  You can blog about each of the goals as you are doing them and people comment and give you support in the form of cheers.

The site has been around a long time.  It predates the slew of Bucket List sites by aways and I think it captures a very important concept that the bucket list sites miss, and that is of the day to day goals.  You don’t have to have any on your list and it could be a bucket list, but the site is great because you can have the day to day goals too.

One of my first goals was to Lose Weight.  I thought that was a good goal and I was wrong.  I explain all of this in the book, but suffice it to say, this was my first entry under Lose Weight:

Jan 26, 2007, 10:11PM PST: WHAT!?!? 127 Days!??!

I thought I had more time than that. Wow, am I ever glad I put the personal challenge on this one. I thought it was a lot more days until June 2nd. I had better come up with a plan here. #1 I will go for the running 5km thing. I will weigh myself (not really important) and get my fitness level done, ie body fat percentage, vo2max and use that to work from.

I received a bunch of comments, and the one that changed my life was this one from someone I didn’t even know, a guy by the name of TobySells:

goals are important

Add a date to the second part and do more than say “I am running a 5k thing” get signed up for one in a few months. You’ve now committed yourself to doing it, and will not want to embarass yourself. I’m going to be doing the same thing. Good luck!

I couldn’t capture all of the Candy that was on super discount with just one photograph, so I made sure I got the deal on Toffifee front and center.  You get 48 of those suckers for $2.25!!  That is less than $0.05 each!!  I am not sure about the math, but I think they are paying me to take them out of their store, and I was more than happy to oblige.

What I am saying is that it still isn’t safe to go back to the Supermarkets…..  They didn’t sell out all their candy.  I hate to have to admit this but, I am sick… very sick…  I cannot resist these temptations.  At least they won’t be around the house much longer at the rate I am eating them, but I will need to work out hard to burn them off.   That is going to be difficult too…

A Little Background

I have big goals for this year.  Huge.  This will be my fittest year yet and I want to start it right.  I intended to be at Crossfit this morning for the 9:15 class.  I love crossfit!  The problem with that plan is that I am actually enjoying snowboarding now as well.  I took it up last year so I could learn along with my kids.  I ski, and I am not bad at it, but I have never snowboarded.  I always wanted to.  I remember I had just heard of it way back when I was in University and I always meant to go, but I never did.  So last year I gave it a shot and you know what?  It SUCKED!!  It was so hard.  Even standing up with both feet on the board is nearly impossible for a 42 year old man.  I was so glad that I lost the weight that I had because if I was overweight it would have been honestly impossible.  Turns out it isn’t just hard for us guys.  I met a couple girls up on the mountain that were learning and I was helping them with some tips and one of the girls, in her twenties or thirties couldn’t get up from sitting either.

Once you can slide down the mountain leaning back on the heel edge of your board, snowboarding isn’t that hard.  You don’t look good and you do take some brutal falls when you catch the toe edge, but sliding down the mountain (I call it grinding) is easier than skiing.  So, I was sliding down on my heel edge and then learned to do my toe edge going back and forth across the mountain, but switching between the two was quite honestly a mystery.  My kids loved it though so I kept at it (secretly skiing with my brother when the kids weren’t around).  Right before Christmas the kids and I went up Grouse and got a private lesson from this awesome teacher Natalie.  She taught us all how to snowboard better and it was the best money that I ever spent.

I cannot recommend private lessons enough.  You don’t need many and almost all of the work is done on your own in practice, but to get corrections in your style and to get techniques that may be beyond you, a private lesson from time to time, in anything you are learning, is priceless.  So, I learned how to do C turns and S turns.

On new Years Day the kids and I hit the slopes again.  Starting the year off right: out and active.  I was getting quite good at the S curves: There are 4 combinations or C turns that make up the S turns: toe right to heel left, to toe right and heel right to toe left to heel right, and I was ‘essing’ down the hill with one of them and when it wasn’t too slippery I was only wiping out from time to time.  Long story short, we ended up going down some runs that were a little too sleep and slippery and I stupidly thought I could S Turn where I shouldn’t have and now I have sprained my ankle (don’t ask me how I too thought that was an unlikely injury for snowboarding).  The spill I took was humiliating as can be and was dramatic enough to deserve an entry all too itself (with descriptions of out of control sliding, snow going where snow should never go and that panicky feeling of speeding up against all possible odds and interventions).  When the witnesses (and oh god there had to be witnesses, didn’t there) asked if I was alright, I said, ‘Of Course, just let me get up’, but of course I was really thinking, ‘Oh Sweet Mother Of God, please let my ankle work until I can get off this mountain without a stretcher and I will burn a goat in sacrifice to your kindness’.  It was brutal.  I have no idea what damage I did snowboarding for the next half an hour to get through the necessary runs to get off the mountain, but I certainly didn’t do it any favors (I did cinch up the binding and boot to excruciating tightness to minimize the movement though).

I am such an idiot.  Why I can’t admit when I am hurt I will never know.  As well, I probably shouldn’t be taking up snowboarding at my age, but to tell you the truth, I think I might have caught some sort of snowboarding bug because right now I can’t wait to get back up there and get better at those S turns until I am flying straight down the hill…  Those jumps and ledges at the terrain park look awesome too…  So it may be a few days until I am back at Crossfit (I hope it won’t be long, but I can’t move my ankle yet and the thing we call walking-not so much hobbling-is a distant hope, so it might be awhile).

Still, a sprained ankle is a small price to pay for how much fun I have been having.

This is the run I have been doing well on by the way, it isn’t the demon run that I hurt myself on….

Back to the Story:

I was in the supermarket in the first place to get some candy for the movies.  I was taking the kids to ‘We Bought A Zoo’ and we were trying to get a reasonable amount of candy for a movie.  We decided not to get popcorn at the movies and instead get a bit of candy before we got there.  Eating and the movies is never easy because in the theatres they sell massive bags of candy and bales of popcorn in portions that are baffling.  There is nothing even approaching small (Ebert thinks this is one of the reasons movies are losing viewers) .  You would need to band together with three or four families just to split one of their family packs, and that is only if you took advanced mathematics in University and figured out if there is some sort of cost savings on the bundle or if you are actually paying more.  We figured we could get some candy at the bulk section of the Supermarket and thus show restraint and still enjoy the movies (and get myself a compression wrap for my ankle as well).

It was a great strategy but I forgot one part.  I sent the kids to get A REASONABLE amount of candy at the bulk candy aisle while I hobbled over to the pharmacy section to get a Tensor bandage (most of you are seeing the problem already but it is amazing what you miss when you are in blinding pain).  When we met up at the cash register I had boxes of Toffifee and Chocolate Oranges and the kids had amassed a lot of bulk candy.  At this point even I had realized my error.  Never send your kids to the bulk candy section without an adult escort.  Obviously what I feel is a reasonable amount of candy and what they feel is a reasonable amount of candy is distinctly different.  Knowing that I had to get across the parking lot to the movie theatre still and drop off the big boxes of candy at the car on the way, I just went with the quantities they bought (after chiding them at length).

So, this entry has 2 warnings, not just the one.

#1.  Stay out of super markets for awhile.  They are still overburdened with the ridiculously tasty candies that you should only eat at Christmas (if even then).

#2.  Don’t let your kids determine for themselves what a reasonable amount of candy is.  They are kids.

In conclusion

In conclusion, supermarkets are bad… very bad places, because aside from that above findings, I also found this:

A new entry for the Crappy Magazine Cover of the Month (Yay, I think!!)  I Would have to go back through last years tallies to see if Us is back on top, but if not, they are close with this entry.  Weren’t they the ones last year with the cover message of, ‘We have found real diets that actually work’, or something to that effect.  I almost like these covers because they admit that they have been scamming us all along.

US Magazine: Okay, okay, you got me… I know I have been selling you false hope and none of these diets work.  True, I love any chance I get to put a beautiful girl in a bikini on the cover of my magazine and I know you will buy it.  But unlike the last 20 or thirty magazines I have sold you, this one is real.  Seriously, the real deal right here.  And you can have the secrets of the stars…  No, I am not lying!  Seriously, we know the stars and they secretly shared with us their… ummm… their secrets… ya…  Secrets to a flat belly fast.

Us: Really?  I don’t know, you have lied to me a lot in the past…

US MAGAZINE: I know… I know… but not this time.  You and I both know that all of the stars have secrets that they only share amongst themselves.  You think J Lo was born with those legs?   Did you think Rihanna got those abs in the gym?  How about Pippa and that but?  There are real secrets and you can have them.

Us: That seems odd.  If there were secrets wouldn’t each of those girls have each others legs, but and abs?  What about your cover model.  Wouldn’t every star use the secrets to have Kim Kardashian’s body?

US MAGAZINE: Well you are just going to have to trust us with this.  After all, we are including the exact meal plans.

Us:  I am pretty sure you don’t get bodies like those with meal plans.  Will my legs get longer?

US Magazine:  Look, if this fails, we also have a whole section on how to dress 10 lbs lighter…

Every year grocery stores buy thousands of boxes of your favourite chocolates, Toblerone, Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Ferrera Roche, Toffifee… you name it. These chocolates are nearly irresistible. For me, they are entirely irresistible. I always get at least one Terry’s chocolate orange for Christmas and a box or two of Toffifee. I can afford to eat these and get back to my daily routine. It isn’t that hard… okay, it isn’t impossible. The problem is, after Christmas these stores still have hundreds of boxes of chocolate left and they need to get rid of it by New Years Day.

They offer it at cost for the week after Christmas. I bought 2 more Chocolate Oranges 2 huge Toblerones on the 26th and 6 boxes of Toffifee yesterday. I am not exaggerating when I say that at least one meal a day, sometimes 2 are nothing but chocolate….

On New Years Eve the stores start marking down the chocolate, instead of $2 for 3 boxes of Toffifee they start unloading it at $1 and $0.50 for 3 boxes!! You get all hyped up and get in the grabbing, people are standing around frantic and excited, desperate to get the good deals, they start pushing and grabbing and you end up with a bunch of chocolate and a dirty feeling for pushing that old lady out of the way so you could get the last box of Fierra Roches….

Stay away. There is no way to win this battle.

Side Note:

On a side note, I have said before how I get constant emails from promotors and marketers for their products. It has actually paralyzed me a little in the promotion of my book…. okay, maybe a lot. The thing is, there are so many crappy products out there, and behind each one is at least one person, if not a team of people trying to make money off of it. I know that their products are crap and I know that the exact thing that most people need is the information in the book I wrote, the problem is, what I know isn’t really important, nor is it universal. I guess what frustrates me most is that these people have no idea who they are pitching their scams to… Of all the blogs out there, would you target mine for a healthy water? How about a healthy cheese pizza??? Seriously… what are these people thinking. Mind you, I am fully aware that if I want to sell a lot of books, I will need to push it like these people push their crap, and I just don’t think I am likely to do this.

So, I thought I would share with you some products that promotors have asked me to share with you. I get offered hundreds of products from these people as well… Someone should have told them, I don’t accept free products…

Offer #1

Hi Mark,

The New Years Ball is dropping in a few days and the crash diets will commence. Losing weight is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. To keep the pounds off in the New Year, I’d love for you to feature the following healthy food alternatives that would assist in curbing the weight.

• HINT Water (www.drinkhint.com): is a fruit-infused, all natural essence water that contains no sugar, calories, artificial sweeteners or preservatives. For all the people who love sweet drinks, HINT Water is a great healthy alternative as they now can stay hydrated without giving up the great tasting flavor.

• USANA Nutrition Bar (www.usana.com): Available in a variety of flavors such as oatmeal raisin and chocolate fusion, USANA bars are specifically touted as a healthy heart product and offer a low-glycemic score. Therefore, they are a sustainable source for energy compared to high sugar snacks so it’s a perfect choice to munch on before/after you hit the gym.

• Amy’s Cheese Pizza: Love pizza? Try this healthy pizza alternative instead. Amy’s Cheese Pizza boasts organic ingredients and has less calories than the pizza at a fast-food restaurant.

• Triscuit Thin Crisps (http://www.nabiscoworld.com/triscuit/): If you love chips and snacking, opt for thin crisps instead. They are baked, not fried like most snacks and also boasts 24 grams of whole grain.

Let me know if you are interested in posting this product round up. Samples are available upon request. Thanks!

Offer #2

It’s that time of year again, when everyone is setting their health goals for 2012. But, believe it or not, about 65% of people end up breaking their New Years resolution after the first month. Celebrity nutritionist and author of The Beauty Detox Solution, Kimberly Snyder, knows that getting healthy is all about changing what and how you eat. Boasting celebrity clients like Drew Barrymore, Fergie, and Hilary Duff, Kim’s book has become a must have among A-listers in the know.

And to ring in 2012 the right way, Kim is offering one lucky consumer the chance for exclusive access to her expertise. Between January 2^nd and 8^th, anyone who purchases a copy of The Beauty Detox Solution (available through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble stores)and sends a copy of their receipt to contest@kimberlysnyder.net will be entered to win this A-list treatment.

I’m happy to send you a copy of the book to review, and/or an additional copy to give away to your readers. Look forward to hearing what you think!

For more info, people can visit: http://www.kimberlysnyder.net/blog/2011/12/28/free-1-hour-consultation-with-kimberly-snyder/ orhttp://wp.me/p1rrrX-2Qx

Thanks and Happy New Year!

Offer #3

Conclusion

I don’t know which of these offers is more ridiculous… I will spend some time talking about each of every one of the mistakes these people are making, other than sending me their emails, but suffice it to say, making your pizza organic will do nothing for your weight gain, and Vitamin K won’t do anything for your hangover. On a pleasant note, I did get this email:

The movie is about 2 minutes too long, but it is cute.

In any case, Happy New Year to everyone. Set a resolution for yourself this year, but make sure it has nothing to do with weight. If you haven’t yet run a 5k, make this year the year you do it. If walking 5k sounds more doable, then set that goal. Whatever your level of fitness, set a resolution to top it! It is your future and it starts now!