Episode 148 - Complete

Vinny Welsby1h 14min

Speaker 100:00

Y'all listen to the face value Podcast, episode 148. The biggest scammers in the weight loss industry. Let's do it

Speaker 100:23

Hey, fatties, welcome to this episode. So glad you're here. I think this episode is probably the one that has taken me the longest ever to research. Frustrated, frustrated without like, it took me. Like, many, many hours. I was like, Oh, this would be a nice quick thing to do. Maybe not. I was going to record the podcast early today it is now 10 to five I was like, well, I'll just quickly get it out at like 10am New had more research to do. So there are a number of links for for this that you'll find in the show notes for everything that I'm talking about, which is facebook.com forward slash 148. If you want to donate to the podcast, because there's no adverts, there's never been adverts. So my goodness. And if you'd like it without adverts then feel free to go over to PayPal, PayPal, and it's just first fatty if you want to send a donation over and if you don't, that's fine as well. There's actually a four part documentary series, which was the thing that inspired me and the documentary series. I'd watched it years ago, and I was just reminded of it it's called the men who made us thin. It's a British production. And it goes through, it's kind of it's almost it's half there being fat positive, but not, not really. There's a lot of mentions of the Oh words. And the presenter is kind of focusing on how it's bad to it's bad to say that everyone is fat, because people like him, who were only ever so slightly fat aren't unhealthy. But it's kind of like the way that he talks about fat fat people is like, well, of course they deserve all this barbaric treatment. But it's the ones that are like me, that's the kind of gist of of this person, the reporter so I mean, and then there's lots of good, there's lots of good, good kind of like, you're like, yes, you're talking about this amazing. And then they go and talk about like McDonald's, I was like for fuck sake, don't direct. So watch that with caution. There's links to watch all four parts. It's on daily motion. So you can watch them for free. If you are so inspired. It's four hours. And yeah, so but from that, and from other research, I was like, You know what, there's some really key kind of the biggest scammers and I thought it'd be nice, nice, lol, enraging to put the list together of maybe who's benefited the most from diet culture, weight loss, all that type of stuff. And like, I think, you know, it would be great if this is all in recent recent recent ish history in the last 200 years. I would love if I have more time and another episode to do maybe older history. Because here we're going back to I mean, the earliest is we're talking about 1830. But really the biggest scammers in the weight loss industry is white, white colonizers. Right? And I'm wondering if there are more kind of solid. This person was the one that did this in regards to and I know what we've spoken about it before on the show in regards to perpetuating the ideas of of thinness and whiteness and fatness and blackness being linked and you know, to be attractive, you need to be thin, aka white. And I think that's basically the biggest scam is in the weight loss industry is is what whiteness, basically whiteness, right? But this is more kind of recent history and what some rolls abroad is everyone on this list is white. Yeah. So but I think all of this that we're talking about today we cannot get away from the systems that are at play here of, of anti black racism of ableism of colonization, sexism, etc, etc etc right and the the big thing being anti black racism that mean that this type of stuff perpetuates and has for hundreds of years now. But anyway, saying all that, but keep that in mind I want you to actually like pick out individuals versus versus systems of oppression, right and so like the people who have really benefited the most from this bullshit, and we're going to start off with we spoken about him before a Dolphy quitter let in 1832. So he was the fella. He was a fella who invented the BMI, although it wasn't called the BMI at that time. So he was an astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist, who created the idea of the ideal man. So he used the words long Moya, which is actually average man, but when he was talking about average, he didn't mean average as in mediocre, he was more like average as in the best, right. And so he was prolific in doing a lot of research, and was really interested in finding out about what the average man was. And he said, If the this is a quote from Quizlet, if the average man were completely determined, we might consider him as a type of perfection, and everything differing from his proportion or condition would constitute deformity or disease, or monstrosity. So he's saying that those who are outside what is the ideal are diseased and monstrous or deformed. So he created the quitter let in quite ALEKS index, later renamed the BMI by measuring white European men their height and their weight and coming up with an arbitrary equation to calculate averages. And the reason people people like the BMI is because it's so simple, right? And that's the reason why it's so fucked up, you know, apart, aside from the fact that it's is bullshit is, you know, it's the, the idea that we're, you know, it's very simple. It's very simple, and it's very easy to say, it's people who fall outside of this are not ideal. And lo and behold, he did an all of his studies on on white men, European white men, and he actually his work actually constitute contributed to the creation of phrenology, which is a racist pseudoscience, which uses the human skull to falsely determine cultural and intellectual superior superiority of white people. So you know, like, you might see those, if you're not familiar with that, see those skulls and it'll have like, little, you know, oh, look, let's measure the length between the nose and the eyes. And let's look at this bony part here. And our turns out that white people are superior Surprise, surprise. Yeah, so his work really influenced a lot of eugenicist pseudoscience because it's the measuring of humans, right. And also grouping humans and races and, and so he benefited greatly because he was seen as an expert in the field. He had many different positions. Yeah, and basically, that, you know, that he did say, we don't want to use the quick lead index to measure health, we want to measure the ideal person, and he talked about beauty and things like that as well. Right. So that was 1832. So let's fast forward

Speaker 109:40

to 1972. So do you remember the name Ancel Keys, so add some keys in we've spoken about on the podcast before. He was famous for running the Minnesota starvation experience experiment, if you want to go into that and one Learn more about the Minnesota starvation experiment. Go to Episode Oh, I think it's 92. It's called the psychology of hunger. And in this study, he had a bunch of consequences a conscientiously objectors. This was in 1944. He had a bunch of them. And there was a lot of kind of shame around being a not being at war. And he wanted to see how to refeed people in war torn places. And so he did this study where he quote, starved, it was starvation experiment, and, and then referred the volunteers Guess how many calories they were on 1800 calories a day. And in the study, which is unreasonable, I'm pointing that out is because that would be seen as a generous diet, you know, calorie amount on a diet, right, but, but the men in this study had terrible side effects, even when so they, when they were, they had a control time where they were fed, I think, 3600 calories for a few months. And then they did this for, I think, three, six months and go to the episode, it tells you more, episode nine to three to six months where they were doing the 1800 calories, and then they had another three months where they would refeeding back at the 3000 Plus calories. And during the time that they were in the starvation period, they just they basically had a really tough time. And then it didn't end when it was the refeeding time. The the effects were were really, really long term on these men. One man chopped off three of his fingers. One man had to be hostile but hospitalized well after the study because he couldn't stop eating, because he was he had developed but but develop developed BDD binge eating disorder. So later on, and so he had that knowledge from 1944. Five years later, he published a study, he used that information earlier to help with the war efforts to help people when they were coming across people who were who were starved. So that was 1944. And then, in 1972, he did a study where he popularized the use of Quickflix original index and renamed it the body mass index, again, made the same mistakes, steak is quite a lot using data from predominantly white men. And that study that he did, the National Institutes of Health then popularized the use of the body mass index as a way of establishing health. So what what really gets on my flaps about Ancel Keys is he saw the, the damage that starving people did to them, and, you know, starving them on still, you know, what would be now considered, you know, a sensible diet, right? And he saw what happened, and instead of championing work in regards to not prescribing diets, he went on to create the Mediterranean diets. So it's like, he was so close, he was so close. You know, his work was, you know, obviously, there was there was good work there. And he did, you know, very, very helpful things for for many people, but it's like he could have, it feels like he didn't put two and two together. You know, and and he just couldn't get out of that fatness was something bad. Yeah, and so him and his wife released a number of diet books later in the years. So that was Ancel Keys. Okay, so I don't know why I went straight to now selkies in 1974, because actually, we're gonna go to 1940 So let's go back in time, let's get back in time. So Louis, Dublin was the chief statistician for maternity Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and now was the biggest insurance company in the world at the time. So this fella Louie Dublin arbitrarily drew up a chart of the weight. Height of, of people who bought his insurance their insurance Met Life Insurance, and included frame size. small medium large, what Burfoot frame size means what what friends is like a human beings a tense leg. So he got people's heights weights and frame size, and concluded that the people of a certain size lived longer. But using only data from people who were 25 to 30 years old. And data which was self reported. Data from people who were rich enough to afford life insurance, that's going to be a lot of white people seeing a theme here, the theme here, female, a perfect white body. And so this this, you know, the chart that he drew up was not based on on evidence or any scientific study. He made the weight, which someone is considered too heavy, much lower than what it was originally. So previously, just a small percentage of the population, it'd be like, you know, how, you know, the doctor might say, Oh, your kids in the 95th percentile for height, and you know, that most of the kids are shorter than your kid, right? So that before, you know, the people who were the highest weight people, but like those were the people who had the biggest bodies, right? Were or were considered too big. So he changed it so that suddenly overnight, and you'll see this is happened a lot of times before when I say a lot of times, or two more times, this has happened big overnight changes to BMI, and what is classed as too big, suddenly, going from a small percentage of people who were considered too fat to half of the American population was reclassified as too fat. So with the stroke of a pen, he was Angel able to change people, people's premiums and charge people's premiums, increase the premiums due to their body size and establish that their bodies were wrong. I mean, I gotta give it to them, you know, for capitalists, you did it right. And his ideas were adopted by the medical establishment and then by the US government, and Louis Dublin's ideas contributed to the toward the creation of the modern diet industry and has had a massive cultural impact. Him doing this as lead doctors telling people in droves to lose weight. And people at the time in the 40s and 50s, rushed to pharmacies in panic, a huge market of consumers, consumers were convinced that they were too fat. And corporate America realized to sell the impossible dream of fineness, they could make an imaginable profits. So corporate America was like licking its lips. And I guess he you know, Louis W. Mills from corporate America, right, you know, was one of their folks was like, Hey, everybody. Yeah, you're too fat. You're too ugly. You're too this. You're too you know, you know, taking on the fat thing. Oh, don't worry, we've got the cure. Right, we've got the cure. So that was in the 1940s. Let's move to 1950. John Mayer. So John Mayer. So this guy is the person to come up with the idea that physical activity will help you lose weight. He was a French American scientist. And he established the popular notion that

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physical activity would help you lose weight. With this really incredibly poor quality observational study he completed on a handful of children. So he went to a summer camp, he looked at a group of girls, some of them were fat, some of them weren't fat. He noticed in that group of girls, one was a cheerleader. One was a ballet dancer. And on the whole, the smaller girls did more physical activity than the bigger girls. They didn't just look go into some camp and just have another look around. Right? And from that, he was like, ah, ha, I know why I know the mechanisms. Clearly. The people who are bigger or bigger because they don't do physical activity, and there was nothing popped up into his head to say, Could anything else be going on here? Could it be that the fat kids are shamed when they do when they do physical activity, and so they'd rather do other things? Could it be that having a bigger body Who came first and not wanting to engage in physical activity came second, could it be that the physical activities that were on offer at the camp that weekend didn't tickle their fancy? And they were more into rugby and archery? And that was all next weekend? You know? Could it be that they came from poor families who couldn't afford to send them to ballet classes, and buy them cheerleading outfits? And could they even fit into the cheerleading outfits? Because they only came in small sizes, you know, like, investigation here, John Mayer, but no, he was like, ah, ha, you're Rica, I've got it. And, you know, weight loss. Weight loss is easy to achieve temporarily through reducing your, what you eat, right? Weight loss from moving your body, really, really hard to achieve. It's just not doable. You know, weight loss from from physical exercise exercise, even though exercise can be something that's really health promoting for some people, not for everyone. It can be helpful, but it's not helpful to for people to lose weight. It's just not there's no, there's no evidence. And I mean, John, here was the first one to say it with his really shit study. You know, no matter how much you exercise, the calorie burning effects are limited by your metabolism. So Maya was incredibly ambitious and was zealous in spreading his faulty science to the US. He became an advisor to three presidents. And his ideas were published in numerous newspaper columns. His influence was such that it became public policy, and so did the deep flaws in his logic. And like to us now, it's like, well, of course, if you exercise you'll lose weight, right? Like it seems so logical, but you know, these ideas are not backed by science. So in 1954, we have a je Cremin. AJ Cremin was the first weight loss surgery doctor, and he was the first one to perform a gastric bypass Cremin and his team connected a patient's upper and lower intestines. It caused numerous medical problems such as uncontrollable diarrhea in patients, as well as other things. And we can you imagine, I mean, no weight loss surgery now is fucking horrendous. Never mind in 1954, the first weight loss patients and why did Ajay Cremin? Like, what? Where did this come from? Right? Like, where did this come from? Why did he why was he doing this? Right. And obviously 1954 this was happening because of diet culture of fat phobia. And because clearly, diets weren't working, we didn't have the we wouldn't have the need for weight loss surgery if diets worked. And so in 1954 people were resorting to which was then a very, very, you know, new and dangerous with no no understanding of long term effects surgery in order to become smaller, which leads me to believe you know, that's a that's a difficult decision. Right? And so it leads me to believe that they had done lots of things to try and lose weight before doing this right. So then, we had in 1959, metric cow, which was a brand of this milkshake, which was said to look like baby formula for weight control. And it was the first mass market diet product launch. So MetroCard and it came in like a can that you opened with a tin can opener and I watched a, an advert from them, and their ad weren't and the advert went, one out of two adults is overweight. One or two adults is overweight. Hmm, where is that from? Oh, remember, Mr. Dublin, Louis Dublin of MetLife, who classified 50% of the US population as to fat. And here we go. 1959 We've got adverts foot for it. One out of two adults is overweight. And because overweight not only detracts from appearance, it also impairs health and shortens life, you should lose weight. I mean, where is this information coming from impairs health and shortens life is coming from that insurance company. So you were to drink the product instead of meals? So it's the first meal replacement thing and they use that Dublin's fought flawed districts to persuade people to buy their product that convince more people that they had a problem through TV and magazine adverts, so that they can sell them the solution. Right? So Louis had said, we've got a problem. And advertisers would like more yawns. Thank you licking their lips, we've got the solution. So advertisers positioned it as something fun to drink a way of life. And so they've got an advert where it's like, having a cocktail party, they want a cocktail party, and you're there with your friends who were all thin and you're thin as the star of the advert. And you were like laughing drinking this fucking rank metric cow. Because especially like the shakes in early days were really bad tasting. And yeah, and so they make made it into the scene, this like really cool and social thing. And they made it. It was presented as a really aspirational way of life, and the matric how ads were huge successes, and they ran for years. And soon metric, hell had hundreds of imitators because consumers failures that getting thin was a recipe for business success. And by the early 1970s, diet, companies were turning over millions of dollars. And as the market became more competitive, it also became more extreme. So with the idea that weight loss came from also working out, we had the rise of in the 1970s. People like Richard Simmons, and he was the first person to make serious money by talking about exercise and weight loss. And so the Richard Simmons show was seen in 200 markets by over 5 million people five days a week. He had a best selling book saying Never say diets and his own gym and ran weight loss cruises where people shouted farewell to fat. He claims to have helped humanity lose 3 million pounds of fat with no evidence to support this claim. And he made his success by exploiting fat people exploiting people who are vulnerable. And a lot of people are like, Oh, Richard Simmons is so nice. He was He always wants to help people. And he could have like, you know, absolutely, he could have genuinely wanted to help people. But I mean, he had made his success over a method that doesn't work, which isn't science based. And and he was a raging fat phobe. And he used fat people in order to continue to be successful. So I mean, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. All right, so in 1977, we had the last chance diet by Robert Lin, a revolutionary new approach to weight loss, oh my goodness, in 1977 they cracked it. So the claim was people will lose up to 100 pounds by using it instead of food. And it was a high protein drink. So kind of like Metro cow, but they they're going balls to the walls now with you know, making it

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as nothingness in it as possible. So it was high protein and lacking essential nutrients and vitamins. So it began to be linked to serious health problems and death. This frickin drink. So the inventor of the diet, Dr. Robert Lin denied any wrongdoing, and the FDA eventually banned it. The industry responded by adding vitamins to meal replacement drinks and people just carried on buying them. The most popular of this tweaked version was SlimFast. So Dr. Robert Lin, he was like hey, I'm just gonna here's a drink with protein and I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor. I know what I'm talking about it so it was just protein. people died because they would they they they they couldn't humans can't survive just on this drink. Right there was no there was no nutrients and there's no vitamins, and it was seriously lacking nutrients. And the guy was just like When when FDA banned it, he was like Lola Lola fingers in is nothing wrong with it. I'm a doctor. Yeah, so slim fast. The natural way to lose weight was invented in 1977. That's when the FDA banned this drink. So he actually started the drink a little bit earlier than 1977. And so it was invented in 1977 by New York businessman Daniel Abraham. And so his strategy was to sell SlimFast cheaper and make it tastier than his medicinal tasting rivals, the SlimFast plan was sold as a natural and healthy way to lose weight. And so it's the same thing, meal replacement shakes, and then they also created fourth food products. And Daniel Abraham. At that time, I think individually, still is the most successful diet billionaire that has ever lived. He sold the company to Unilever in 2000 for $2.3 billion. He also created DEXA trim, which was a diet supplement, which increased the risk of hemorrhagic stroke alongside other nasty side effects. So he was in it for you know, getting getting the money out of the fatties. And when you hear him talking about, you know, watching an interview with him, he, you know, really has contempt for for fat folks. Yeah, so he has made some some money, a lot of money 2.3 billion off the backs of fatties. Okay, so going back in time again to 1963 I thought I had these in these in time order. Apparently I didn't. The Atkins diet. So the so the Atkins Atkins as in a keto diet, so it's a Keto ketogenic keto that was invented, like in the 1950s 10, something around there. And actually, it wasn't a diet for weight loss. It was a diet for for children with epilepsy, right. And so for a long time, it was just a used as a diet for children with epilepsy. And it still is today, because it's effective as something for pay for children with epilepsy, epilepsy, right. And so in 1963, Robert Atkins came along. And he didn't like diets that met drinking real meal replacements or counting calories. And so he decided he could lose weight just by cutting out carbs, and using this keto diet. And this was based on a false idea that certain food types are responsible for weight gain. So his book a diet revolution, so hundreds and 1000s of copies a week, and he was the first international diet guru. And despite the criticisms over the next 40 years, he built an empire with a range of low carb foods. So there's no evidence to show that the use of the Atkins diet or his products results in long term weight loss or improved health. Unless you're a child with epilepsy, then you could just do any type of keto diet if that was you don't need to do Atkins. So you know, there was a big hoo ha about oh, X, Atkins died because he had a heart attack or something. I was looking into this. And actually he he died. So this is what happened. This, this is what I've seen. There's an icy sidewalk in New York, he's fell slipped his head, I think he went into a coma then died. But then there there was leaked medical records, his wife refused to let them do an autopsy. Apparently, this is all apparently leaked autopsy records to say that he had problems with his heart. But then other people came and said, Actually, it was just some type of minor thing. And he was I think he was in his 70s. So it was not that scandalous. But some people are like, Aha, here's proof that the Atkins diet didn't work because the Atkins founder died of coronary heart coronary heart disease. And he was so fat when he died. He like they mentioned that how many pounds he was he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't so bad when he died. I think he was just like an average weight of a man you know? But they were like, Haha, this shows that this diet doesn't work well. I mean,

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It isn't one man. Right? You can't say our diet doesn't work because he might have died from a heart condition. Who knows? Right, but, I mean, that's what really, is this diet gonna make people thin? Because that is what are people going on diets for is thin increased health improved health for whatever. And there is no, there is no evidence right. And you know he was going to die it eventually he lived to 70 Plus, I mean, which is I think slightly less than the average but I mean, is this black and white thinking that I'm like, I don't like this black and white thinking of haha, see, you know, we don't know what else is going on in his life. And I mean, he's fell and slipped and we might have fell because he had a heart attack. Who knows? We don't know. Right? And even if he did us fat positive people are not judging people. In that way anyway, so. So that's the scandal. Yeah. I don't know what to make about it. Either way, Atkins doesn't make you thin. And he got very rich and became a international diet group guru on the back that it will make you them. So Jean NIDA rich, the founder of Weight Watchers. So she is frog. She was this is in the 1960s Right. So Jean began giving talks to housewives who wanted to slim after she had lost weight herself. She then decided to franchise a business by having copycat genes all over the world giving speeches to groups of people and charging for the privilege. In 1967, during the time of Twiggy thinness being in Weight Watchers came to the UK, the head of the UK operations Bernice Weston. She is a giant bellend said you can go and watch it Episode One quote when it comes to eating fat people are basically very stupid. Thanks, bunnies. You can submit it's so Weight Watchers owns to statistics and quote, evidence of success has shown that their lifestyle change is not effective. It's not effective, and only a tiny percentage of people maintaining weight loss past five years. So Weight Watchers trance was transformed into a small domestic business into a global super brand under the financial direction of Richard Sambre, who worked there for 25 years. And he said okay, so this is the finance director of Weight Watchers for 25 years, he said Weight Watchers is successful because those who fail have to come back and do it again. That's where your business comes from. So he was quite happily talking to the to the journalist saying yeah, I mean, that's our business is repeat customers. weightwatchers chief scientific officer said she was really mad that he said that she was like, well, he doesn't know anything. He's not here anymore. So I think he I don't like it. Basically, she was mad. But then she said there's a reason that we've been here for 60 years is because people come back to us time and time again. Oh, really? Like why are you bragging about that? Ah, Weight Watchers is a revenue of $1 billion a year. Today, Weight Watchers is based in the very building where Louis Dublin from MetLife insurance company paved the way for the diet industry all those years ago. Okay, so let's move to the 1990s. And you've got an honorable mention here for a normal person but a pill. I guess I could try and find out who created it. It was probably a team of people anyway. Fen Fen so fenfluramine slimming pills, so methamphetamines previous to this methamphetamines were prescribed in the 50s and 60s to lose weight. And then they were banned

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because they realized that they weren't giving housewives meth but then And it paved the way for fenfluramine. phentolamine which was called Fen Fen. And then that was released for sale after meth was was banned. And it was lauded as a dream drug and a miracle cure. It was an appetite suppressant. It was addictive and it killed many people and it has long term effects on the people who took it. The manufacturers Wyeth pharmaceuticals so we're going to hold a pharmaceutical company whole responsible for this one. Why is pharmaceuticals knew of the harm that their product what the harm of their products and withheld this evidence even when they were under investigation, in order to cash in on the moral panic made up around the made up a word epidemic. So Fen Phen Fen Fen by the way, it's built pH en dash f en. And the thing is with these these diet, diet drugs, we did an episode on diet drugs. It's always the same story. This is a miracle drug that is gonna make people thin. And so how does that work? How does it work? It's basically speeding up your heart. Well, and the FDA approves it because being found is the worst thing ever. And it doesn't matter if fat people die because you know, at least at least they'll be fat and dead huh lol you know, being sarcastic there with that lol. And, you know, even in recent years of these, you know, drugs that are coming out, it's the same shit. There's no we don't have the evidence. You know, they'll have a short term study. People lost weight. Yeah, but then they died. You know? So we got to, you know, when when we have these new drugs coming to market looking at what, what they do, and what long term evidence that we have for it? Yeah, because it's probably not good. Okay, now my personal I hate this guy. He is, I feel like he is really a villain. Professor Philip James, British guy 9095. He set up the international Oh, word task force by OTF. He looked at the recommended BMI is created by Louis Dublin in the 1940s. So it's 1995 by now, I looked at the recommended BMI created by an insurance company and arbitrarily dropped the recommended BMI due to that faulty evidence. This was then adopted by the World Health Organization. Millions more people became classed as fat again, overnight. The IoT f the international obesity task force was funded. Who were they funded by? What do we think? What do we think? Tell me your answer. Who were they funded by? Weight loss companies? Yes. Weight loss drug companies who gave a number of payments to Philip James totaling 1 million pound or 1.2 million US dollars. And he's like, Yeah, who cares that they they're the ones who funded this research. If even if it's even if it's false, at least we're going to get people to be less fat. That says his attitude. Like it doesn't matter if it's if it's if it's wrong, if it's arbitrary because if we tell more people that they're fat, then less people will be fat. Like what? You know more people can be treated for the disease of fatness. Okay 2006 John Franco dicta Capello invented the key diet Ke Ke Ke diet which is Ke Ke tau but it was with a twist because we need to get more extreme because you know that doesn't work doesn't work doesn't work. We need new branding. This is what we do. We need new branding. We knew we need a new twist. Okay, and so this diet the KE diet, also known as the feeding tube diet. A doctor will put a feeding tube into the patient and is fed a proprietary mixture which is 270 calories or De through the feeding tube for a specific number of days, they then come back to the office have the feeding tube out, and then presumably go away with a temporarily smaller body, probably disordered eating, and then we'll then way more than when they started. I'm absolutely fucking wild. And so it was, it was the mixture was keto based, right. So the, you know, protein 270 calories a day. Can you imagine? Okay, so 2007 We have Kevin Trudeau, a marketing man with no medical training, has a diet book called The Weight Loss Cure, they don't want you to know about reported $5 million in sales and is based on a discredited 1960s diet, where you eat a tiny amount of calories a day and ingest hormones that can be extracted from the urine of pregnant women. I love the fact that this one's been descript discredited, but although the rest of fucking every other diet hasn't been discredited yet. So that was a New York Times number one bestseller, The Weight Loss Cure, they don't want you to know. Yeah. So in 2008, Syed Yu Jiang and Artem Petkov, created new, I was surprised that NUMA is actually that old because new and feels like it's about five years old, right? And you're thinking, Who are these creators? Are they nutritionists? Are they therapists, because NUMA is all about, you know, psychology? No, they are to computer scientists. And they trick people into thinking they're getting cognitive behavioral therapy. Their website says neum is grounded in science. It's at the heart of everything we do, is it? Because they have a so I went into the like this, or they have a research bank. Oh, oh, love it. No, I'm gonna look at all the studies. And they will they've got the links to the studies. And then they tells you what the study says in a sentence. That that laughable, they really are laughable. I scroll all the way down to the one study that says, from the 40 Plus studies that they've got, because they're like, We love science. And this is how this is how these diet companies are tricky. Motherfuckers because if you said, Okay, so we're backed by science. Okay, I believe you want to do it in a more digging? We use cognitive behavioral therapy, we use psychology. Oh, that sounds fancy. must be true. But it's if you still don't believe us, check out our 40 Plus scientific studies. You've got 40 Plus scientific studies, they must be great. All right, I believe you now, but even if you still don't let's look at the studies. And that's what I did. So I had a look at the study days. So one of them has got mention of amount of people who have like 30 something 1000 people I was like, amazing. Love it. Lots of people. That's good, right when we had that, that that's the episode I did a few weeks ago on how to how to decipher studies, right? And so one of the things that studies do is they'll say, we love to three people. Turns out blah, blah, blah, and it's like really three people or you know, 10 people, but this had 30 plus 1000 people great after a great start. They said okay, so they said the summary of this study is 77.9% reported a decrease in body weight while they were using the app. Okay, that doesn't sound that good. If someone is using the app, shouldn't they shouldn't be 100% of people losing weight. Okay, well, let's go set this round up to 80% 80%. I'll pay ya percent. All right. How much why did they lose?

Speaker 149:56

Well, looking at it most lost less Some 5% of their weight. Okay, so 5% We're looking at a 200 pound person, that means that person lost 10 pounds. And what's the other thing that we said about studies, specifically weight loss? Weight Loss studies, do you remember about the time timing? With all diets, weight loss is very easy to achieve. Normally, depending on how many diets you've done, the more diet you've done, it's harder, but you will lose weight initially, and then three to five years, that's when the weight comes back on and more. They looked at users over 18 months. Of course, of course. So they're there fantabulous data to show that 80% of people lost around 5% of their body weight in 18 months, doesn't sound that amazing, does it? And that's about the you know, that's less like the top line of reading that's reading the study, if we go in deeper, will get more information, but I was like, shit, you know, it's not gonna get any better than that is it? I mean, this is what this is what they're bragging about, you know? And, and so I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it is 77.9% of people who lost way bigger in life and give him the benefit of doubt that that's a good thing and give him the you know, it's a tiny amount of weight, a tiny amount of weight and he's people who are self reporting. Alright, so, I love this, this post by Reagan chest and I'm going to give you a quote from it. About noon their commercials are chock full of diet advice that is old as the hills and has no research to back it as actually creating sustained weight loss. Brackets eat grapes instead of raisins. Drink wine isn't a beer, drink a glass of water if you're hungry, blah, blah, blah. And one of the programs seems to be based on the old eat watery, fiery bulky foods so you'll feel fuller advice that doesn't work because your body is a sophisticated piece of machinery and not a lawn mower in 1987 1987 called it called and wants its shitty diet advice back. Moreover, how can they claim to be brand new while also claiming that they you helped to keep the weight off for life? That claim would have had to be backed by some serious long term research. In order to be credible. I asked them for research I asked in an email through their website contact and on social media, including one memorable thread that's had 758 comments to which they replied directly to 757 who Guess whose comment did not receive a response Reagan's common Yeah, so it is hilarious. Hilarious. They're like we're a brand new Daya lifelong weight loss. How do you know that you're offering what lifelong weight loss when you haven't been around for the for the lot for life for me with lives? You know? The reason why neum is so big is because they got a shit ton of investor back backing. They were anticipated to go to IPO initial public offering. And that would value neum in excess of $6 billion. So neum right, these companies right, what they're what they are a lot of these companies what they are, is they're just sophisticated marketing companies, right? Because they have this product which is is shit, big pile of shit. And they do some very good wizardry to trick us. People are very passionate about neum whenever people mentioned no more online there's gonna be people who will say no, they're different they talk about psychology, but it's no they don't they give you a very very low calorie diet no matter what your goals are. If you say you want to be healthy if you want to say you want to lose weight, they'll give you the same fucking thing and they will give you they do the coding that you know red foods, green foods yellow foods, right the same shit that Weight Watchers was doing right points and what's the other one in the UK? There's a big one Slimming World in the UK. And they've been around what since the 60s. It's the same fucking advice has been going around for you for forever. There his food is bad. And if you eat it, you're gonna get fat. So don't eat it. Ah, you've lost weight. Don't talk to us in a year or two because we don't want to know when you're fat again. But they've got they've got millions and meat they've got they have had so much funding. That's why every single fucking podcast has a known advert is because of the gargantuan amount of funding that they have. Because they are smart marketers, because they've said, Okay, there's a gap in the market for a good app. And they've won awards for their styling of the app for the for the user experience, right? They've done a good job at that. But they are charlatans they are scammers because that diet doesn't work and their own evidence shows it but they hope people are a trustworthy trusting of them enough to not look about evidence. You know? This motherfucker did so sorry. That's my dog. That's my dog. Coughing All right, so 2009 We've got Dr. Oz. That giant human turd. Lawmakers called out OLS for describing certain supplements on his show as quote, magic Weight Loss Cure and, quote The number one miracle in a bottle. Lawmakers had a hearing and specifically took aim at Oz's promotion of pure green coffee beans, which claims to help users lose 20 pounds in four weeks and 16% body fat in three months. The FTC the Federal Trade Commission sued the products Florida based marketers and won a $9 million settlement. And with Dr. Oz, it's kind of like well, if he wasn't scamming people, then he would lose his license. It's actually really difficult to lose your medical license. You have to basically be killing people. You have to really, really fuck up. Really fuck up. Telling people about scammy fake miracle cures on a TV show isn't going to cut it. Unfortunately, he has to kill some people and I mean, I mean, these this shit that he's showing, you know, has it killed people probably, you know, this is caffeine shit and shit your pants stuff and who the hell knows. But that says that's Dr. Oz is that this show since 2009. He was on Oprah. Oprah gave him a show. And that's, he says, basically I lie because it's more entertaining. I need to give flowery, flowery language. And when someone is on his show when a product is on a show, it's called the OLS effect. They they make they make a shit ton of money. Millions. Because he says hey, here's a miracle cure. Here's what here's what's gonna make you fucking green coffee beans. I mean, you can't make this shit up. The Dukane diet in 2010 his book became the best selling diet book in the UK. The Dukan diet is high protein low carb, Atkins do can expanded massively beyond selling diets creating a business built on books, foods and health supplements. He became fitness and became famous because it said that what's her face the princess that's married to William Kate Middleton, that Kate Middleton and her friends and family did the dukan diet to become thinner for her wedding. His business is worth a reported 96 million. He makes claims that his products are quote miracle calorie burners. But no evidence of such He also claims that 25% of people who do his diet, keep the weight off for for four years. And that seems to be picked out of his asshole. Because there's no evidence. All right, so 2013 Dean Kaman Dean is the person who invented the

Speaker 159:35

wheel sad thing on wheels segway. He created the Segway. He didn't stop there. He was like I'm not done with creating stuff. He also created a machine, a machine assisted bulimia device. He created a machine assisted bulimia device called Aspire assist to pump the stomach's contents through retube which has been served surgically implanted into the abdomen. It's horrifying. It's horrifying. Basically, it's surgery to give someone bulimia, they eat food. Then they have a wire, a tube that's going directly into their stomach coming out of their tummy in an open wound, and there's a port there, they connect it to this pump, and then they stand over the toilet, and they empty the contents of their stomach into the toilet. Here's a quote. This is the first time that I look at a device that was approved by the FDA and I am absolutely utterly and totally appalled that it was approved, says Joseph Guttman, an endocrinologist and diabetic diabetic technologist under a shoe that's diabetes. in Pembroke Pines, Florida who has treated patients with Oh word for 30 years, Guttman says, oh my goodness, that's his name Guttman, and he treats fat people. So as he put together a group of 750 physicians who want to sue the FDA to take the device off the market, his ultimate goal is to get 4000 doctors to join him. It is the most pathetic exhibition of ignorance on the part of our agency, the FDA, it is nothing but a bad trick. It's like a bad joke. And so, surprise, surprise, the FDA approved it after a very small trial. Side effects the port valve can cause infections the tube can leak. Some experts fear that the device might trigger eating disorders and no shit Sherlock. nuv final one, our final one we're getting to 2021 and we're giving a shout out to Paul Brunton and Richard Hall. Paul Brunton was the lead researcher who released the jaw wiring device called dental slim. You know what I had a I had an epiphany about dental slim. I've been reading it reading it as dental ism. Ever since it came out in 2021, I've been reading that and I did a podcast about it and have read the word dental slim, because it's all one word as dental ism. And I was like, how are they changed the name of it? No, I just my brain had just was like, No, it's called dental dental slim. And so we've got the lead researcher. We've also got you know, authors of the study the study into this dental swim. The split study is garbage, by the way. We've got Richard Hall and Paul Brunton we've got front and then we've got people who created the device who were on the author's they were the researchers and authors into this device. Right and so turns out that Dr. Hall, Richard Hall, and the University of Otago, which is where Paul Brunton is from and then another fella called doctor, but don't ski. They are all owners of the device. So Dr. Hall 40%, but Dansby 30 and University of Otago. 30. And then they kept it secret, right? They kept it secret. They basically I haven't even told you what this fucking thing is, is I did an episode on it. But in case you didn't listen to it, it's a jewel wiring device where you have like these brackets on your teeth and then magnetically locked shut. And basically, you can only have a liquid diet and that is why they think that it's in that's the weight loss mechanism. Doesn't work and has terrible side effects. But yeah, they did this study, and the study was done by the people who own the fucking device.

Speaker 101:04:34

So that is something that the ethics committee should have known or spotted before given the study the green light, and there were no conflicts of interest stated in the paper. So they are fucking scam scam scam a ruse. And not only that, even if the study was legit, they are still people who have made a jaw wiring device. In 2021, we're not in this fucking 40s anymore. It's 2021 Yeah, other shoutouts to the other big diet companies. Herbalife HMR Boston Jenny Craig lindora Medifast Nutri system profile by Sanford simply good foods which is actually Atkins Weight Watchers. Yeah and you notice how a few of these Herbalife I think Nutrisystem, Medifast. They are all M. L. M. 's multi level marketing companies which add on, add on another layer of scam because they're scamming people with the diets. And then they're scamming people who are working for them by getting them to pay to work for them, to then scam people to work underneath them. It's just scam a rific. They're the most scam tastic of the diet companies. So so there you go, there's an overview of the biggest scammers in the weight loss industry. Who is your, I don't wanna say favorite. Who's your like, I hate them. I think Louis Dublin, like Louis Dublin, from the MetLife has a lot to answer for but that British guy who's a giant bellend what's his name? Professor, Philip James, he also is Pooh poohing. So, study came out, Katherine Fleagle, did this lead the study into looking at all the data, they did a roundup of all the data about mortality risk of, of different PMIs. And I think it was 40 studies with many, many, many people. And the study showed that people who were Oh word had decreased mortality than people who are, quote, normal weight. And he's just talking shit about her. I mean, like, she's not doing she's not doing the research. She isn't. She was what what they did was they did a meta analysis of other people's research. You she she was just like, here's, here's what the information says mother hugger. And he's like, I don't like it. I think fat people are awful. Yeah, he, he gets all my tips and most I, you know, like some of these people. They I think they genuinely do they, I think some people do care about like some people who are in the world of, oh, research, care about fat people and health. I'm saying this with really, like, dare lie. But a lot of these people are just like, dollar signs in their eyeballs. You know, if I was deeply unethical, and I had a time machine, you mean going back and like starting a diet company? I mean, you know, probably got better things to do. But no, that's it, you know, if you're unethical then talking about, you know, get helping people to temporarily lose weight will make you money, you know. But you got to be a sophisticated marketer to stand out from the crowd. And that's the what the difference is with the these folks, right, because there's probably been lots of diets that have come and go. But these are either the most outrageous, or the ones that have stuck around the longest. And they had something new, like think about Weight Watchers, they had something new because they had the group meetings that was never done before. New had something new because they they were, you know, out in 2013 on the app game, that was new and they're like, oh, psychology, right? Soon enough new is going to be the old deal might take 20 years before and people are like oh yeah numerous for like middle aged ladies or whatever. But then there's going to be something new right? And it's going to have to be even smarter. I mean, there's gonna be something new every single fucking day but because I think that we, as consumers have become more attuned to knowing that weight loss advice doesn't work. And so they're having to take a new approach and make it about what is in fashion, or coming into fashion. And that would be body positivity at the moment, right? And mental health and all that type of stuff. And so they are absolutely going to do that. And when that is out of fashion, or there's a new thing that is more more sexy, then they're going to do that. And I really think that, you know, these folks, they might not have meant to be, but a lot of these folks are deeply unethical. And I've caused a lot of harm, some more than others, and some maybe didn't mean to, but they have ideas in their mind and have run with it, you know, to the detriment of a lot of people are not just fat people. So they can Oh, fuck off is what I think. All right, well, thank you for hanging out with me today. I'm gonna go take duty for a little walk. It's dark now. Oh, my goodness. My be video is failed again. I don't know why. You know, you know, once a year, I have to have things go wrong. And two weeks in a row. My video has failed. So who the fuck knows why I think my phone just from time to time, so it's just like, fuck yeah, I'm done. I've had enough of your bullshit, Vinny. But I've got rollerskating tonight. And then tomorrow, some Internen friend of the show is coming around my house and we're recording some

Speaker 101:12:01

videos she is playing in the video. She's playing a wellness influencer, who says, you know, shit to me. Like I guy. Have you had some color hair up your bomb. And you know, I'm playing the fat person who's like, well, so we'll see how that goes with other games. And then before we get some lunch, and then oh, I've got a day on Friday with the same guy. This will be date number five, with the same guy that I mentioned a couple of episodes ago. So this is the most updated someone in like a number of years. I was like, I think I've been single for three years. You know what, I was looking at something the other day and I was like, oh shit, man, I've been sick for five fucking years. What? I think you know, the pandemic is like, messed up with timelines. Right? You know, it's kind of like because those years didn't exist. And so, in my mind, I'm like, Yeah, but real human years. It's three years because two years we were like, inside and the shit. And now we're hot. You know? What now we're kind of half coming out. And so these are half years. Anyway, so So yeah, so yeah, the most updated someone so who knows how it's gonna go so far. So far, so good. So I'll keep you updated with whatever happens even if it goes tits up. And then I can spill the gas because I know that he he's not listening, or I won't get all right. Well, thanks for hanging out today. We'll see you in the next episode of ie.

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