Hotshot starry tv trainers who can make people lose 800 pounds in a week turn out to be peddling quack “weight-loss pills” that are both useless and harmful. How sleazy.
Both trainers have created standalone sites — jillianweightloss.com and bobharpersupplements.com — to sell their supplements. By taking this under-the-radar path with their diet pills, the trainers are using the fame and trust they’ve gained from their time on the Biggest Loser to market weight loss supplements to a consumer base eager for a quick fix that “really works.”
There is little proof that either pill “really works” at all. Michaels has faced four different lawsuits from consumers claiming her supplements either didn’t work or were dangerous. All four suits were dismissed, and it wasn’t clear whether the ingredients singled out in one lawsuit — Chinese rhubarb, Irish moss powder and uva-ursi — posed a major risk to consumers. But Lynn Willis, professor emeritus of pharmacology at Indiana University, says that Michaels’ Total Body Detox and Cleanse supplement is ineffective:
“This product is an absurdity,” says Willis. “It’s completely bogus that this would detoxify the gut. Someone takes a laxative and they lose two pounds of water weight, but it will come right back.”
Ah the old “detox” nonsense – the stuff you can get in Prince Charles’s overpriced boutique Duchy of Cornwall shoppppes. Also in Boots, also in the chain drugstore near where I live.
Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor at Georgetown University, agrees:
“Supplements like this are laxatives and diuretics, and they don’t have any place in a rational weight loss regimen because they can dehydrate people and leave them short of electrolytes,” [she] says. “And supplements have side effects.”
That doesn’t stop Michaels and Harper from continuing to claim their supplements are different from all the rest. Harper’s site boasts claims of two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies that confirm the effectiveness of his active ingredients, but one of the studies was funded by the makers of Harper’s pill, neither is named or linked to, and only one can be found online. According to an indepedent supplement review website there are several flaws in the study: the caloric intake of the participants was not monitored or restricted, which means there is no way to tell how many calories each participant in the study consumed on a daily basis; the study wasn’t performed on Bob Harper’s supplement, but on a different product; and four out of the five co-authors have ties to the company that makes the diet pill. Despite this, Harper claims on his page that he’s “tired of good people like you getting ripped off by scam diet programs and products that just don’t work,” and that his really does.
Blegh. Really sleazy. That old advertising bluff – all these other quacks cheat you and I’m tired of it, so here’s my totally authentic shit that I wouldn’t dream of selling you if it weren’t 100% totally 100%.
The Duke and the Dauphin are at it again.