Governments should be regulating the commercial weight-loss industry to prevent Canadians from falling victim to misleading claims from fad diets, diet pills and weight-loss devices, say two obesity doctors.
In an editorial in this week's Canadian Medical Association Journal, Drs. Yoni Freedhoff and Arya Sharma say too many weight-loss providers take advantage of vulnerable consumers desperate to lose weight and "happily exploit" them.
"Although experts agree that obesity management requires long-term behavioural, medical or surgical intervention, the majority of commercial weight-loss providers manipulate vulnerable consumers with impunity, cultivating unrealistic expectations and false beliefs," they write.
Freedhoff is the medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute, in Ottawa, and a contributor to the CTV Health Blog, while Sharma is the medical director of a weight-management program and professor and chairman of obesity research and management at the University of Alberta.
They claim that an "unregulated weight-loss wilderness" exists in Canada that allows weight-loss patients to be swindled. They say that not only are consumers being bilked out of their money, they are being allowed to endanger their health.
"This has, at times, had fatal consequences, as with the administration of ephedra4 and with medically unsupervised very-low-calorie diets," the authors write.
The doctors say they regularly see "preposterous" claims, such as that vitamin B injections can provide quick weight loss, or that "magical" herbal supplements can curb appetite, or that pills can "melt away" fat.
"Many of these products and sometimes services have very little science behind them showing that they are effective and that they work,' Sharma tells CTV News. "All that you can lose with some of these products is the money in your product."
Canada AM's medical expert Dr. Marla Shapiro says many Canadians mistakenly believe if the products really didn't work, then Canadian authorities wouldn't allow them to be sold.
"If we allow these claims to go unchecked, if we allow the claims to sit in a drugstore in a pharmacy, somehow there is the implicit belief that it must be fine," she says.
Freedhoff and Sharma call on both doctors and governments to protect consumers from shady weight-loss providers.
"Failure to impose and enforce penalties for false or misleading weight-loss claims results in a major public health hazard," they say.
Among the changes they would like to see are:
- formal accreditation of weight-loss providers to ensure quality and a way for consumers to determine which methods are evidence-based
- legislation that would subject weight-loss products to regulatory approval based on proper clinical testing before they can be marketed
- require manufacturers of weight-loss supplements to substantiate their claims scientifically
- education for health professionals on the weight loss advice and therapy that are backed up by scientific study
Calgary dietician Andrea Holwegner, says she is all for regulating the weight loss industry, but doubts it will happen.
"Given the economic recession that we're now facing, in I don't see this as being one of the biggest priorities that the government would have," she tells CTV.
On his blog, Obesity Notes, Sharma reminds that the only proven way to lose weight is through the long-term management of dietary caloric intake combined with increased exercise. He says in some cases, medication and surgery are recommended, but even these are not cures, just treatments.
He says consumers should mistrust any weight loss products that promise to:
- cause weight loss of two pounds or more a week for a month or more without dieting or exercise
- cause substantial weight loss no matter what or how you eat
- cause permanent weight loss (even when you stop using product)
- safely enable consumers to lose more than three pounds per week for more than four weeks
- cause substantial weight loss for all users
- cause substantial weight loss by wearing it on the body or rubbing it into the skin
