Diet Pill Deception: US and Canada
FatFoe...it's a catchy name, and in fact, it's designed to "catch" websurfers who are looking for a quick weight loss fix or miracle diet pill. But these aren't con artists who are perpetrating a diet pill scam on naive consumers--it's a pair of government agencies from the U.S. and Canada.
At first glance, the diet pill site, FatFoe, promisesresults that seem too good to be true.
In fact they're not.
So why would two watchdog agencies of the US and Canadiangovernments put up a fake website purporting to sell a"dream" diet pill? The diet pill, called ‘FatFoe', claimsusers can lose up to 10 pounds a week without exercising andwhile still eating their favorite fatty foods.
The ‘FatFoe' diet pill doesn't exist, and claims made on thewebsite are impossible.
Once the user clicks on the link, they learn it's all partof an campaign by the USDA and Canada's Competition Bureauto warn customers off such "pie-in-the-diet-sky" diet pillproducts.
The USDA and the Competition Bureau hope that websurferssearching for "miracle" diet pills will stumble across thesite, andlearn a lesson
This "red
flag" campaign began in February 2003, initiallyto make the media aware of claims that should make itquestion the efficacy of an advertised product:
A similar campaign in November 2004 ‘Operation Big FatLie,' resulted in legal action against a number of companiesthat made at least one of the "red flag" claims inadvertising.
The Federal Trade Commission has since hit a number ofcompanies with big penalties and hefty fines in connectionwith the campaign.
The campaigns appear to be working. In April of 2005, asurvey by the FTC revealed that the number of obviouslyfalse weight-loss claims for diet pills, dietarysupplements, creams and patches fell dramatically, from 50percent in 2001 to just 15 percent in 2004.
For additional information, and a list of "red flag" claimsall consumers should ignore, go to diet pill information.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George McKenzie is a free lance writer and CEO of Mastermind
Learning Systems. He's a former TV news anchor and radio
talk show host.
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