{"id":7142,"date":"2014-01-23T09:10:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T14:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=7142"},"modified":"2015-12-07T11:52:57","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T16:52:57","slug":"in-the-weight-loss-world-doctor-recommended-means-sweet-fa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/in-the-weight-loss-world-doctor-recommended-means-sweet-fa\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Weight Loss Supplement World, &#8220;Doctor Recommended&#8221; Means Sweet FA!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my publication &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/dirtyrottentricks.com\/cgi-sys\/suspendedpage.cgi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dirty, Rotten Tricks! Supplement Company Lies That Cost You Money!<\/a>&#8220;, I talk about the &#8220;doctor recommended&#8221; scam.<\/p>\n<p>Essentially, the word of a medical doctor holds a lot of sway with the general public, so supplement manufacturers and retailers will often do whatever they can to be able to claim that their product is &#8220;doctor recommended.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What they do to make this appear to be the case however, runs from the deceptive to the fraudulent.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In some cases, they will simply make a doctor up. Yes, seriously. They will grab a picture of a doctor from a stock photography web site <a href=\"http:\/\/www.istockphoto.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">like this one<\/a>, put it on the web site, and say doctor &#8220;so and so&#8221; endorses their product. Most people won&#8217;t bother to check if doctor so-and-so actually exists. This happens ALL the time.<\/li>\n<li>Pay anyone who is legally entitled to call him\/herself a doctor to provide a recommendation for your product, even if that person&#8217;s field of expertise is not the slightest bit related to the product in questions.<\/li>\n<li>Misrepresent yourself as a doctor, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/news-events\/press-releases\/2004\/06\/ads-various-diet-supplements-and-topical-gels-dont-cut-fat-says\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FTC alleged<\/a> one of the principals of a supplement company called Basic Research, LLC did back in 2004.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Occasionally however, weight loss supplements are endorsed &#8211; or even completely or partially formulated &#8211; by a &#8220;real&#8221; bona fide doctor.<\/p>\n<p>Such is the case with a supplement called Sensa, which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/sensa-tastants-review.html\">we reviewed<\/a> a few years back in response to numerous people&#8217;s inquiries into whether it worked or not. One of the product&#8217;s claims to fame was the fact that its effects were apparently backed by a large clinical study conducted by Dr. Allan Hirsch, the product&#8217;s inventor.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see if you have a quick peek at our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/sensa-tastants-review.html\">original review<\/a>, there were serious issues with the study&#8217;s methodology, and the study was never actually published in any journal. Not surprising; it doesn&#8217;t take a genius to realize that when the same person who has the most to gain from a positive outcome is the same one conducting the study, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, Hirsch greatly exaggerated the extent of his supprt from the scientific community.<\/p>\n<p>Since the product has been on the market, it has had to <a href=\"http:\/\/classactionlawsuitsinthenews.com\/class-action-lawsuit-settlements\/sensa-weight-loss-system-class-action-lawsuit-settlement\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">settle a class action suit for $6 million<\/a>, and now, the makers of Sensa have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/news-events\/press-releases\/2014\/01\/sensa-three-other-marketers-fad-weight-loss-products-settle-ftc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fined $26.5 million by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission<\/a>, because, according to the FTC, they&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230; deceived consumers with unfounded weight-loss claims and misleading endorsements.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, it&#8217;s very clear what the point of this article is; endorsements from genuine doctors mean next to nothing in the weight loss supplement world. The reality of weight loss is simple; it takes work, and it takes time. There is no magic pill. No one likes to hear this, so we&#8217;re eager to believe it when someone credible &#8211; like a doctor &#8211; tells us that there <em>is<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>But that doesn&#8217;t change the fact of the matter.<\/p>\n<p>As ever, buyer beware!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my publication &#8220;Dirty, Rotten Tricks! Supplement Company Lies That Cost You Money!&#8220;, I talk about the &#8220;doctor recommended&#8221; scam. Essentially, the word of a medical doctor holds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7,9,17,24,28,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7142"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10437,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142\/revisions\/10437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}