Lose 4 to 5 kilos per week easily and you won't gain the weight back afterward.
Does that promise sound too good to be true? Well, it is. It is among the hundreds of advertising claims and testimonials touted by sellers of non-prescription weight-loss remedies. They appear in leading magazines and newspapers, on television commercials and the Web. And millions of people succumb to the false promises every day, throwing away good money and, sometimes, their good health along with it.
Most dietary supplements for weight loss have had little or no scientifically acceptable testing for effectiveness and safety, especially when used for months.
"Over-the-counter dietary supplements to treat obesity appeal to many patients who desire a magic bullet for weight loss," Dr. Robert B. Saper and colleagues at the Harvard Medical School wrote in the journal American Family Physician in 2004. Those desperately seeking to lose unwanted kilos can choose among more than 50 individual dietary supplements and more than 125 combination products, none of which meets medically acceptable criteria for recommended use, the experts wrote. Millions of gullible people seem to believe that "if it's natural, it's got to be good." Judging from the growing supplement sales, few people learned from the fiasco with ephedra, an admittedly effective weight-loss supplement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned in 2004 after it was linked to 10 deaths and 13 instances of permanent disability among 87 reports of serious adverse effects in less than two years.