The royal road to riches:
Worthless diet - Fat celebrity - Women's mags - Daytime TV - Celebrity 'news'
A study on one of the largest commercial weight-loss programs was just published in the International Journal of Obesity but has been ignored by the press. Understandably, a major media campaign and flurry of press releases have not trumpeted its findings.
Researchers at four major research centers across the country followed 60,164 adults enrolled in the Jenny Craig Platinum program in 2001-2002 to evaluate how long people were able to stick with this program and how much weight they lost.
They found that a quarter dropped out the first month, 42% after 3 months, 22% after 6 months, and only 6.6% were able to stick with the program for a year.
Unlike Kirstie Alley, the weight loss among people not being paid as celebrity spokespersons was considerably less notable. For a 200 pound woman able to keep with the program an entire year, according to this study, she would have lost half a pound a week....except fewer than 7 out of 100 were able to hang in for a full year. Hardly winning endorsement for the success and palatability of the program.
Indeed, a government review found that two-thirds of American dieters regained all the weight they had lost within a year, and 97% had gained it all back within five years.
Among the charges the FTC specifically made against Jenny Craig was that it “falsely represented that the advertised prices were the only costs associated with the programs....also deceptively failed to adequately disclose additional mandatory expenses.” The FTC added allegations that “Jenny Craig represented without adequate supporting evidence that nine out of 10 customers would recommend the Jenny Craig program to a friend, and represented that it had surveys backing up that claim, when it did not.” They were ordered to have scientific data to back up any future about weight loss and maintenance and to disclose in their advertising or to any consumers who inquire by phone all fees and costs of the additional products or services in the programs. There is no evidence that the FTC action has resulted in any changes.
Jenny Craig International is one of the corporate sponsors of the lobby group, American Obesity Association, along with Weight Watchers International, Inc., Slim Fast Foods Company, pharmaceutical companies and Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc (a bariatric surgical supplier). As discussed here, these organizations, along with insurers and major employers, are also part of the National Business Group on Health. These groups lobbied to get obesity declared a “disease,” pushed for weight loss products to be tax-deductible (in other words, subsidized by taxpayer dollars) and market the “costs of obesity.”
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/0...rcial-diet.html