Reality Check

Fantasy, Futility and Fraud Flourish in the weight loss business.

Thousands of weight loss schemes have been marketed -some sincere but flawed, others frankly fraudulent.  Some estimates of cost suggest over 35 billion dollars a year is spent in the USA alone on weight loss while increasing numbers of people are becoming obese. Diet Plans such as the Atkins diet and the South Beach variant are pitched by persistent advertising and many people join the parade of followers. Some lose weight, but almost all regain the weight they lost.

Infomercials, shown on cable TV promise that you can lose all the weight you want while you eat everything you want are false and not to be believed. This is what everyone wants of, course, a quick cure, but there is no easy path. It doesn't matter what they are trying to sell you - crab shells (chitin), fat absorbers, fat burners, magic mushrooms, wonder bark from Brazil, magic cellulite pills, pyruvate, creatine, garcinia cambogia, green goop, algae, magic genies in a bottle - it's all a great fantasy that will not come true.

Every year, new weight-loss books appear on the bookstalls, and magazines run repetitious articles on the subject. Millions of people have proven that it is easier to gain weight than to lose it. Dieters have proven that weight-loss attempts by following a "weight-loss diet" may succeed for a short time but ultimately fail. There is no magic diet. None of the weight loss schemes printed in any book over the past 50 years has had any real advantage over common sense.

The medical community, food industry, dietitians government health and regulatory agencies, magazine publishers and diet businesses are all watching helplessly as Americans and Canadians consume  excessive amounts of food and become increasingly obese. This epidemic of obesity threatens to bankrupt the health care system in both countries in the next 50 years. 

Here are some good consumer rules:

Red Flag - claims that are never true:

• You can eat whatever you like
• You don't have to exercise.
• Fat stores "burn" off spontaneously.
• Celullite disappears
• carbos are bad, fats and proteins are good

We have been unable to substantiate any claims that any substance on the market actually "burns fat". The idea is intriguing but no product does that. Calcium pyruvate is not "exercise in a bottle."  The herbal substance "garcinia cambogina" has been studied and show no fat burning ability and will not cause weight loss.

We advise against drug use for weight loss  and encourage all overweight people to seek a healthier life and achieve weight goals without the use of drugs. The regrettable problems encountered by users of the weight loss drugs,  Redux and fen-fen, should remind everyone that weight-loss drugs have a regrettable history of poor long-term efficacy and intolerable side effects. Evidence suggested that dexfenfluramine (Redux) caused  irreversible pulmonary hypertension and that the combination of this drug with phentiramine (fen-phen) causes heart valve defects in human subjects and brain damage in lab animals triggered increasing concern about their use.

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Eating and Weight Management

Alpha Nutrition Program

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