A Never-Ending Quest for Easy Solutions

 An Overview
A Never-Ending Quest for Easy Solutions
Since at least 1900, American consumers have been searching for a safe and effective way
to lose weight. As a nation, it has been a losing battle. Overweight and obesity have reached
epidemic proportions. An estimated 61 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and the
trend is in the wrong direction.2 Overweight and obesity constitute the second leading cause of
preventable death, after smoking, resulting in an estimated 300,000 deaths per year at a cost (direct
and indirect) that exceeds $100 billion a year.
The struggle to shed unwanted pounds usually resolves itself into choosing between
responsible products or programs that offer methods for achieving moderate weight loss over time
and “miracle” products or services that promise fast and easy weight loss without sacrifice. Over
the course of the last century, popular weight-loss methods have included: prescription and overthe-
counter drugs and dietary supplements; surgical procedures such as gastro-intestinal bypass
surgery, gastroplasty (stomach stapling), and jaw wiring; the television shows of motivational weightloss
gurus; commercial weight-loss centers; commercial diet drinks; doctor-supervised very-lowcalorie
diets, complete with their own vitamin shots, fiber cookies, and drinks; the development of
fat-free, low-fat, fake-fat, and sugar-free foods; weight-loss support groups; exercise trends such as
aerobics and body building; and cellulite creams.
Almost all weight-loss experts agree that the key to long-term weight management lies in
permanent lifestyle changes that include, among other things, a nutritious diet at a moderate caloric
level and regular physical exercise. Nevertheless, advertisements for weight-loss products and
services saturate the marketplace, with many promising instantaneous success without the need to
reduce caloric intake or increase physical activity.
This is not a new phenomenon. In the last 100 years, various types of weight loss products
and programs have gained and lost popularity, ranging from the ludicrous – diet bath powders,
soaps, and shoe inserts – to the dangerous, such as the fen/phen diet pill combination. Around the
1900s, popular weight-loss drugs included animal-derived thyroid, laxatives, and the poisons arsenic
and strychnine; eventually each was shown to cause weight loss only temporarily, and usually to be
unsafe to use. In the 1930s, doctors prescribed dinitrophenol, a synthetic insecticide and herbicide
that increases human metabolism so drastically that organs fail, causing blindness and other health
problems. The hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) became popular in the 1950s for
weight loss, and resurfaced recently, even though the FDA exposed it decades ago as effective only
to treat Fröhlich’s Syndrome, a particular genetic imbalance occurring only in boys.
The 1990s saw an explosion in dietary supplement marketing, many of which are of
unproven value and/or have been linked to serious health risks.As discussed in this report, the

Federal Trade Commission has brought numerous cases against the advertisers of weight-loss
supplements for making false or misleading advertising claims. Other products may raise serious
safety concerns. For example, experts, including the American Medical Association, have raised
concerns about the safety of ephedra, a popular diet pill ingredient, and Health Canada recently
warned Canadian citizens against using ephedra for dieting because of its dangerous propensities.