Beyond
Walking

By Ronda Gates, MS

Ronda Gates, MS, is a pharmacy grad who traded her white coat for a pair of athletic shoes and never looked back. Her health promotion business, LIFESTYLES, provides motivational speaking, program development, and fitness assessment services to support people making a lifestyle change. She has developed health promotion programs for many organizations nationwide.
Visit www.rondagates.com for a complimentary subscription to Ronda’s weekly email newsletter.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

— Henry David
Thoreau

The Savvy Consumer’s Guide to Quackery

Today’s health-oriented consumers are inundated by waves of advertisements promising eternal youth, quick weight loss, and magic cures. Many products are worthy of our hard-earned dollars. Others are marketed by flat-out dishonest entrepreneurs who use skillful ploys to hoodwink consumers into handing over hard-earned money for worthless and sometimes dangerous products and advice. If you are a savvy consumer who wants to avoid being taken in by seductive advertising, use this guide that can help ferret fact from fiction and identify fraud and quackery.

• Claims of solutions that sound “magical” or that present enticingly simple answers to complex problems. The old saying, “If it seems too good to be true — it is” applies here.

• Distrust of the current methods of medicine or suspicion of the regular food supply coupled with “alternatives” for sale under the guise that people should have freedom of choice. Beware when someone claims the medical establishment is persecuting them or that “doctors don’t know about this” — can mean an amateur is making your diagnosis. A current infomercial markets a book that claims there are over-the-counter, easily accessible products that will cure diseases that doctors don’t want you to know about. Ironically, the author has been fined often for contempt of court for failing to obey a federal ruling that bans him from infomercials. Why is he still on the air? Because the money he makes selling fraudulent products far exceeds any fines lodged against him. (See www.quackwatch.org for more on consumer protection issues related to infomercials.)

• Evidence in the form of testimonials, case histories, and other non-scientific support for their claims. These are carefully selected. Federal law prohibits companies from coaching customers who give testimonials in infomercials. However, the questions they often ask, off camera, in footage that is edited in post-production, can elicit the answer they want you to hear. Advertisements use paid actors to tout their product. Sometimes it’s a famous person who is used on the packaging or who, in a television ad or infomercial, appears using the product. They are getting the last laugh as they deposit the millions they make in fees or royalties for their work. Everyone is passionate about something. Simply ask yourself, “Can I believe what I hear?”

• Testimonials and claims from various “institutions.” For example, before Ephedra was removed from the market, the advertisements for one of the most popular over-the-counter weight loss products containing Ephedra read, “brand X was the first herbal product to achieve the A.C.E.R.I.S. Quality Assurance Seal and continues to surpass regulatory requirements.” Most consumers would find this impressive. Since I had never heard of the organization, my penchant for ferreting fact from fiction led me to do a search for it. As I suspected, the language was nothing more than savvy market-speak. The A.C.E.R.I.S. Quality Assurance Seal is a seal that any manufacturer may purchase. Vendors need not demonstrate any assurance of quality or provide any documentation to use this seal. Ironically, there was later a class action suit against the company after the federal government fined it for false advertising. The company settled but refused to admit wrongdoing.

• Impressive-sounding terminology used to disguise a lack of good science. There are too many products marketed using the phrase “Research studies show…” when the only research conducted was sponsored by the company selling the product. Good science means the product was put through rigorous testing using double-blind research (neither the person dispensing the pill or potion nor the person receiving it knows if it is the real thing or a sugar pill) with subsequent results of the testing published in a peer-reviewed professional journal.

• Evidence from “unpublished studies.” Valid scientific studies are published in reputable scientific journals not consumer magazines, including this one.

• LOOK CLOSELY. Marketing geniuses can advertise a product with myths and misinformation but the package containing the product must state the truth. Look at the bottle or package itself. Here are two examples:

1. Some ads for products containing chromium picolinate claim the supplement builds lean tissue and burns fat. But the bottle itself never says that because it isn’t true. Strength training builds lean tissue. Cardiovascular conditioning promotes use of stored body fat.

2. The box for a popular nutrition bar reads, “to burn stored body fat, you must eat the correct ratio of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats,” but the statement isn’t on the wrapper because it isn’t true.

• In tiny print, somewhere on a page, the word “Advertisement.”
• Product availability from only one source.
• Evidence that is purported to be valid because the person has an M.D. or Ph.D. degree or “has studied at a reputable institution.” Anyone can audit classes at almost any institution, and a job as a lab assistant doesn’t mean the individual has done research.

By thoughtfully examining advertisers’ claims, savvy consumers can avoid quackery and choose products that truly live up to their promises.