Health

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Smart for Life Diet: Just Eat Cookies?

If you live in one of the cities where Smart for Life has offices, no doubt you have seen their TV commercials touting their cookie diet. “I lost 35 pounds in three months by eating cookies,” says one now slender client.

They say their cookies are made from extracts of fruits, vegetables, wheat and dairy, and their commercials show all those produce and grain ingredients being loaded into their cookies. But, they only provide ingredients listings for three of their six cookies on their site. Here is their recipe for blueberry cookies.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Triple Filtered Water, Vegetable Glycerin, Doctors Protein BlendTM (Milk Protein, Egg Protein, Organic Whey Protein), Hydrolyzed Collagen (Gelatin), Organic Whole Oats, Organic Crisp Rice (Organic Brown Rice Flour, Organic Molasses, Calcium Carbonate), Organic Invert Sugar, Organic Dried Blueberries, Organic Whole-Grain Wheat Flour, Vegetable Gum, Organic Soybean Oil and/or Enriched Organic Golden Flax Meal (Organic Flax, Fish Oil), Vegetable Gum, Organic Fractioned Palm Oil, Raw Organic Oat and/or Wheat Bran, Organic Oat Flour, Organic Pure Tahitian Vanilla Extract, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Sea Salt, Natural Flavoring, Organic Nutmeg. Contains at least 60% Organic Ingredients.

Yum. Notice that water is the first ingredient, meaning there is more of it by weight than another other ingredient. And the only “vegetable” listed for the three cookies online is “vegetable glycerin” and “vegetable gum”. No wonder some people around the country are selling 12 days’ worth of leftover cookies on Craigslist. Worse, the cookies are not particularly nutritionally dense considering they will account for most of the food you will be eating daily.

The diet requires you to eat six cookies a day instead of breakfast, lunch and snacks. For dinner, you are only allowed six ounces of protein and two half-cup servings of vegetables. According to one of the company’s doctors who is interviewed, clients generally eat only about 800 calories a day. So, at 105 calories per cookie, that would only leave 170 calories for dinner. Eat hearty!

The commercial also claims “it will save you a fortune over other plans.”

*MOUSE PRINT: A two week supply of cookies is $129!  That is over $1.50 per cookie. (NutriSystem says their real food is about $10 a day, or about $140 for two weeks.)

In addition to the cost of the cookies, there is an initial evaluation and program fee,  including medical tests, and vitamins. That adds hundreds more to the cost.

The company’s website does, however, have good news for would-be clients:  “No exercise needed to lose weight” and “Eating habits improve automatically and permanently”.

Sure.

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Airborne’s Legal Remedy: Nothing to Sneeze At

airborne.jpgEveryone has probably seen the commercials for Airborne — the cold remedy “developed by a school teacher who was sick of catching colds in class and on airplanes.”

Clearly, this sounds like a product that one would take to prevent catching a cold.

Even their website back in 2001 gave that impression and more:

“Crowded environments like Airplanes, Offices, and Schools are spawning grounds for germs that cause colds and sickness! AIRBORNE’S unique natural formula of seven Herbal Extracts, Antioxidants, Electrolytes, and Amino Acids, offers maximum vitamin and herbal protection for hours! Plus its natural ginger component helps fight nausea caused by motion sickness. Take at the first sign of a cold symptom or before entering crowded, potentially germ-infested places!  [It then quotes a user as saying:] A miracle cold buster!”

And a few years later they touted the results of a clinical trial on their website.

*MOUSE PRINT: Though there is page after page of mumbo jumbo, it does suggest a reduction in symptoms by those who took Airborne. However, only 48 people actually took the product.

Fast forward to 2006. ABC reported that Airborne’s clinical trial was conducted neither by scientists nor doctors, but rather by two guys hired to conduct this particular test. The company then dropped references to it on its website.

Fast forward again to 2008. Airborne just settled a class action lawsuit claiming that the company misrepresented the product, and it agreed to pay over $23 million back to purchasers. [Get claim form here.]

The settlement agreement is lacking at least one key provision, however:

*MOUSE PRINT: There is no requirement that they refrain from making unsubstantiated claims in the future.

August 2008 Update: The FTC just entered into a settlement with the company to prevent them from making unsubstantiated health claims in the future, and to pay a total of $30 in settlement to aggrieved purchasers.

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Act Fluoride: Twice the Size, Half the Strength

actsmall.jpgWhen MrConsumer’s dentist advised him that a new cavity might be in its earliest stages of development, he checked out fluoride rinses that claim to restore minerals to weak spots in tooth enamel and prevent cavities.

The granddaddy of brands is Act, formerly owned by Johnson & Johnson, and recently acquired by a company called Chattem.

Act comes in two sizes: 18 ounce and 33.8 ounce. Luckily for MrConsumer, Rite Aid had the large size on sale last week, and there was a rebate. It was a seeming no-brainer to buy the big size.

actmedium.jpg

Upon closer examination of the ingredients label, MrConsumer found a shocker:

*MOUSE PRINT: The larger bottle has less than half the strength of fluoride compared to the smaller one.

actstrength.jpg

Now who would ever expect that a different size bottle would have a different strength of the active ingredient? In fact, if you look at the larger bottle, there is a “2x” on it. Without reading carefully, one might assume that “2x” means twice the strength or twice the size, but certainly never half the potency. A closer examination reveals that is says “2x a day”. Okay, so you can use the product twice daily.

As it turns out, the company says the smaller bottle is a once a day product, and the larger one is a twice a day product. Apparently you get the equivalent amount of fluoride using the diluted version two times a day.

Nonetheless, with such an inconspicuous but important difference, countless customers in the habit of using the product once a day may buy the large size, rinse as usual, and unwittingly not get the protection they expect.