This year the FCC has already fined three companies $34 million deceptive advertising about weight loss. Catey Hill of MarketWatch says, "If you see an advertisement that says, you know, seven days to lose seven pounds or something like that, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
According to Hill, the most important part of dieting is calories in and calories out. She shared the story of a professor of nutrition did what he called the convenient store diet where he ate only Twinkies, Snickers, Doritos and other junk foods but only ate 1800 calories a day and ended up losing weight.
According to Hill, the most important part of dieting is calories in and calories out. She shared the story of a professor of nutrition did what he called the convenient store diet where he ate only Twinkies, Snickers, Doritos and other junk foods but only ate 1800 calories a day and ended up losing weight.
To see the full list, click here....... http://tinyurl.com/qzp3mth1. “Some of us are big, fat liars.”
Currently, more than one in three American adults over 20 is obese — up from roughly one in four 20 years ago. And millions of other people are currently carrying more weight than they’d like this time of year, thanks to the annual holiday overeating ritual.
Many Americans experience not only health problems but also guilt and shame over these added pounds. And that’s why weight loss — an industry of diet companies, weight-loss supplement manufacturers, diet book authors and obesity doctors — is big business. Companies that focus on weight-loss programs (think Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers) raked in $2.4 billion last year; sales of supplements — many of which promise weight loss — add as much as $14 billion. And doctors now perform hundreds of thousands of bariatric surgeries a year to help patients lose weight.
Paulo Buchino
The bottom line: For many, our extra weight is a source of cash. And to get that cash, some companies are willing to stretch the truth of what their products will do.
According to the most recent data from the Federal Trade Commission, roughly 15% of weight loss ads contain false claims or false information. Already this year, the FTC has fined three companies about $34 million over deceptive advertising claims. Among the cited companies is the marketer of Sensa, a product that consumers sprinkled on their food to help them lose weight, which will pay $26.5 million to settle charges of false-advertising because, according to the FTC, the company “deceived consumers with unfounded weight loss claims and misleading endorsements.” (Sensa says that “the settlement includes no admission of wrongful conduct.”)
“There is little evidence that pills and supplements can help you lose a lot of weight,” says Mary Engle, the director of the advertising practices division at the FTC.
What’s more, some of the biggest players in the industry have accused each other of deception. In 2010, Weight Watchers (the largest provider of weight loss services in the U.S., with more than 43% market share) sued Jenny Craig in U.S. District Court in New York over its ads that said that “Jenny Craig clients lost, on average, over twice as much weight as those on the largest weight-loss program.” Weight Watchers claimed that no major clinical trial was done that proved this statement and that those assertions were false and misleading. The two companies reached a settlement: Jenny Craig, though it admitted no wrongdoing, agreed to never again publish, broadcast or disseminate the ad in any form. In a statement issued at the time, Jenny Craig said, “We challenge Weight Watchers to compete directly with us in a head-to-head clinical trial.”
To be sure, the majority of weight-loss ads are relatively honest, and there are some diet supplements that work. Still, the amount of misinformation in this industry is high, experts say. Engle says that to avoid fraudulent weight-loss products, consumers should be on the lookout for labels that promise quick action (like losing 10 pounds in 10 days), and labels that use words like “guaranteed” or “scientific breakthrough.” She also cautions against using creams or patches that promise to help with weight loss.
2. “Dieting is making you fat.”
While the point of a diet is to lose weight, often the reverse happens: We end up fatter than when we started. “Diets don’t work long-term,” says psychotherapist and eating coach Karen R. Koenig, who has written five books related to weight loss. In one of the most definitive reviews of studies on the issue, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that people who diet typically lose 5% to 10% of their starting weight in the first six months, but between one-third and two-thirds of them — depending on the study — end up regaining more weight than they lost within four to five years. Traci Mann, now a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota and an author of the study, says she thinks the re-gaining figure may actually be much higher. The results, she says, are skewed by methodological bias in some studies and the fact that in many cases, only studies with solid weight-loss results published their findings.
Part of the reason for this is that many dieters can’t keep themselves from eating forbidden foods for long, and when they do, they binge, taking in a ton of calories at one time, Koenig says. “If diets actually worked, we wouldn’t have to go on so many of them,” says psychologist Alexis Conason, a researcher at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center. Rather than going on short-term diets, experts say, people should opt for a long-term eating plan that will help them cut calories and eat healthier foods, but not leave them feeling deprived.
What’s more, diet foods themselves may prompt weight gain — in part because people misunderstand labels. According to a study published in 2006 in the Journal of Marketing Research, people who saw a “low fat” label on a food package ate up to 50% more of that food in a sitting than people who didn’t. Plus, consumers assume that foods labeled low-fat have significantly fewer calories than they actually do, even though that’s often not the case. Normal-weight consumers who saw a low-fat food label on a one-serving bag of granola estimated that the bag contained 141 calories, even though it actually contained 201 calories (a nearly 43% difference). For overweight people, the difference was even more pronounced: Those in the low-fat label-group underestimated the calories by 57%.
Non-caloric artificial sweeteners — like those found in many diet soft drinks — have been linked to weight gain, though it’s difficult to prove cause and effect. Several large-scale studies have found a link between aspartame consumption and weight gain, including a widely cited 2008 study that found that the risk of becoming overweight or obese among people who consumed 21 or more artificially sweetened beverages per week vs. those who did not consume any was nearly double. While it’s hard to say why we’re seeing this link, some researchers speculate that artificial sweeteners may not fully satisfy our sugar cravings, thus inspiring future sugar binges, and others think the sweeteners may impact our metabolism. (The makers of the popular artificial sweetener Splenda say that it does not cause weight gain, and the Sweet ‘N Low website points to research that shows that artificial sweeteners don’t cause overeating.)
3. “You might do just as well on Twinkies and Doritos.”
When most people think “diet,” they think of eating fruits, veggies and lean protein. But Mark Haub tried something different. The professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University put himself on a “convenience store diet” made up of things like Twinkies, Doritos, Oreos and sugary cereals. The twist: He limited his caloric intake to 1,800 calories a day (the average man eats 2,640 calories per day.
In two months, Haub had lost 27 pounds and lowered his bad cholesterol by 20%. Haub’s kind of diet isn’t nutritionally advantageous (though his regimen included vitamin and mineral supplements), but it does show that total calories consumed make a big difference in weight loss.
Indeed, many doctors and nutrition experts say that to lose weight, you need do little other than reduce the number of calories you eat and increase the number you burn. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine — which divided participants into four groups, putting each group on a diet with a different make-up of fat, protein and carbs but all with similar calorie counts — found that “reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.”
This means that consumers might not need to shell out big bucks for the latest diet books and products, says nutritional biochemist and author Shawn Talbott. Dieters can keep a journal of what they eat and count calories that way, or they can try out one of the many free calorie-counting apps, such as MyFitnessPal. Katie Rickel, a clinical psychologist at weight loss facility Wellspring at Structure House in Durham, N.C., says that “keeping track of what you’re eating every day is one of the best methods for long-term weight loss.” Look to cut calories and make sure you’re getting the proper nutrition, including fruits and veggies, she says.
Diet companies disagree with those who say you don’t need a weight-loss company to help you lose weight. A Nutrisystem spokesperson points out that its system, which provides customers with meal delivery, means that there is “no counting, measuring or weighing,” so it’s easier to stick to. And a study published in 2013 in The American Journal of Medicine found that Weight Watchers — whose methodology, to some degree, encourages users to cut calories — is more effective than doing a weight-loss program yourself and that the more often participants used Weight Watchers tools, the better; the study was sponsored by Weight Watchers.
4. “We’re making you — and your kids — unhappy.”
Not only does dieting often leave you feeling hungry, it can do all sorts of unpleasant things to your psyche. A study titled “Grapes of Wrath: The Angry Effects of Exerting Self-Control” published in 2011 in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people on a diet may be more prone to anger. Indeed, when people chose an apple over a chocolate bar in the study, they then were more likely to opt to watch movies with anger or revenge themes than to view more innocuous films; and in a related study, participants who ate a healthy snack instead of a better tasting snack were more annoyed by marketing messages that included controlling words like “you ought to” or “you must.”
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