Weight Loss Supplement Claims: Fact And Fiction Guest Column by Weight Loss Review Expert

Guest column by Paul Crane, founder of UltimateFatBurner.com – a review site for fat burners, weight loss products, sports supplements & functional foods.

A guest on the Rights Radio Self Help Hour, Paul graciously agreed to share further insights with our readers. You can hear the January, 2009 replay here…

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If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you’ve seen them; late night TV ads hawking miracle weight loss pills that melt fat “quickly and easily.” You’re a sound sleeper? Then you’ve seen the equivalent ads in print in popular men’s and women’s magazines. And if you don’t buy magazines, I’ll bet my bottom dollar you’ve heard similar ads on the radio.

And I know you’ve seen them on the Internet.

The point I’m making is that we’re bombarded, day and night, by products that offer quick and easy solutions to the years of accumulated flab. Many products don’t even require the addition of diet and exercise, claiming formulas so potent as to burn fat without any additional effort.

And the claims?

They range in ridiculousness; 30 lbs. in 30 days, 30 lbs. in 15 days, etc, etc. One of the main problems is that the diet pill / weight loss supplement market is so large—there’s a ton of money to be made from desperate customers—and so populated by retailers, that competitors often attempt to outdo each other. This leads to a series of rapidly escalating claims of effectiveness, none of which have any basis in fact.

As a consumer, you may believe that you are protected, and retailers are not allowed to make claims of effectiveness unless they have something to base those claims on. In the case of diet supplements, the truth is much closer to “caveat emptor” than anything else. The laws and regulations that govern the supplement industry are quite liberal. For the most part, retailers can say almost anything they want, provided they indicate that the FDA has not evaluated their claims.

Of course, the government recognizes that with such lax regulations, the potential for abuse exists. In the U.S, for example, it’s the job of the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov) to keep the supplement industry in check. Of course, like most government departments, it is chronically understaffed and underfunded, and unable to prevent any but the most outrageous and egregious frauds (you can see an example of a recent action here!).

Because of this, it’s up to you to protect yourself. How do you do that? By being an informed consumer. A little perspective will help with that. For example…

A pound of fat is the equivalent of approximately 3500 stored calories. The average person needs roughly 10-12 times his/her own body weight in calories daily, depending on activity level, amount of muscle mass, etc. A 150-lbs women would therefore require 1500-1800 calories daily.

Next, let’s take a look at one of the most promising supplements for weight loss, green tea. There are several promising, peer-reviewed, published studies that indicate green tea is beneficial for dieters. One study in particular (see Am J Clin Nutr. 1999 Dec;70(6):1040-5) showed that green tea elevates the metabolic rate, resulting in an increased caloric burn.

It’s not surprising that many retailers of weight loss products that include green tea reference this study (it’s pretty impressive to say “A recent study published in the American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition”). What they do not do, however, is link directly to the study, nor provide the results in their proper context. Here’s why…

The study showed an average of 4% increase in metabolism in the study participants. That sounds impressive, until you do the math. Remember that 150 lbs woman from earlier on? If she requires a daily caloric requirement of 1,500 calories to be sustained, a 4% increase represents a paltry 60 calories. Remember what a pound of fat contains? Yep… 3500 calories. In order to burn the caloric equivalent of a single pound of fat, she’d need to take the green tea supplement for 58 days.

Not so impressive now, huh? (I’m not diminishing the value of green tea as a supplement; I think it’s fantastic for numerous reasons (as detailed in my full review); it just does not deliver miraculous results).

Another way to put the claims into context is to consider what you would need to do physically to burn off that fat (remember, fat is nothing more than a stored fuel source). The average person burns about 600 calories per hour doing moderate intense exercise on a treadmill. That’s about 6 hours of pretty intense work to burn the equivalent of a single pound’s worth of fat calories. There’s no evidence that some indiscriminate blend of herbs—or even prescription drugs—can duplicate those sort of results.

If that’s not enough for you, consider this; if there really was a magic pill that could melt fat off effortlessly, do you really think it would be sold on late night TV by some “fly-by-night” company? Nope… it would be sold by Pfizer or another big drug company; who would buy the rights and advertise it during prime time, with their logo floated front and center.

In closing, remember the golden rule (if it sounds too good to be true, it is), and recognize that the majority of retailers are willing to capitalize on your desperation—even increasing the impression that losing weight is nearly impossible—in order to separate you from your money.

I’d also recommend you visit UltimateFatBurner.com and download the free “Dirty Rotten Tricks: Supplement Company Lies That Cost You $$$.” It’s packed with critical information that will further your quest to become an informed (and forewarned) consumer.