Just one gummy a day…

Of late I've been seeing some very scammy advertising online for a product that makes astounding weight loss claims. Yes, I know, there are a ton of them out there!

One of the things I enjoy doing is playing Words With Friends on my phone, a modern version of Scrabble. The app is supported by advertising which I see, because I refuse to pay the outrageous price they want for removing ads (something like $20/month!)

Anyway, there are often very scammy ads displayed at the end of each turn, one of which is for a product claiming outstanding weight loss, without diet or exercise, just by taking a single “gummy” each day.

Clicking through to the website took me to this page:

That's pretty interesting because the Shark Tank claim is completely bogus, and Snopes has covered that. The Shark Tank TV programme has never covered such a product. The page always shows the current date, so that it appears that the information is current. And, there's little popups that appear down the bottom showing sales, apparently in real time, for people like “George in Sydney” who just bought 5 bottles. I guess that gives unwitting consumers confidence that others, just like them, are buying the product.

The final page of the ad claims that it's the “Last day to get free gummies”. Having seen the ad multiple days in a row, this clearly isn't true!

Now obviously claims of being able to lose such a large amount of weight in such a short time, especially without changing your diet or exercising is obviously not credible. Even if you ate just the gummy each day, such weight loss is impossible, and extremely dangerous!

The implication is that these gummies have some magical properties that accelerate the body's ability to burn fat. In all the research over the years, such a product remains elusive, and products that have had dramatic weight loss effects are invariably dangerous causing increased blood pressure, and in some cases, death.

The ads that are run usually contain fake photos. It's pretty easy with Photoshop, to change people's proportions, or these advertisers find photos online of people's dramatic weight loss and use those.

I recently came across a New Zealand connection to this scam. It appears that celebrities often have their images used as if to endorse these products. It seems that kiwi celebrity Petra Bagust, who appeared on various shows from the 90s through to 2012, has had her image and videos roped in, possibly using AI to support the sales campaign.

This YouTube video does a good job of exposing the scam. The video promoting the product is made up of a series of video sequences with Petra looking “normal”, interspersed with still images of her looking severely overweight. (I'm aware that definitions of normal, overweight and obese are pretty controversial.) The guy on the video thinks that the promoters have used AI to simulate Petra's voice to get her to endorse the product. Depending on where you live, you might see an Australian celebrity or an American celebrity. Now the guy who made the video isn't from New Zealand, so doesn't know who Petra Bagust is, or what she sounds like, but to me, the voice is only slightly similar to Petra's. I think a simpler explanation is that they've just used a voice simulator to create a voice that sounds similar to hers.

Anyway, this does seem to be a big industry. Searching for Keto Weight loss Dummies online gives a huge number of results, and some seemingly reputable companies are selling them. And, interestingly, these products seem quite similar to the Prüvit MLM products that Bronwyn reported on in last week's newsletter. The central ingredient in these products appears to be beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) which in central in the Prüvit MLM products also.

It may be that there's some potential effectiveness of these products, but it's likely to be minimal. The Keto diet itself is pretty questionable. It's an extremely low carbohydrate diet which supposedly produces dramatic weight loss. Low carb diets were initially discovered as a way of treating epilepsy in children, but they've become popular as a weight loss “solution” over recent decades.

Ultimately, all the evidence shows that for long term sustainable weight loss you need to be consuming fewer calories than you're expending. Low carb diets may help with curbing appetite, but they're unlikely to be sustainable in the long term, and cutting whole food groups out of your diet is likely to be unsustainable and potentially lead to bingeing and eating disorders.

It's unfortunate that there are people willing to take advantage of desperate people in these scams and make money off products that are unlikely to be effective. People want quick, simple fixes to problems - that “one crazy hack” that will fix things. Sustainable, long-term weight loss requires commitment to diet and lifestyle changes. Hardly surprising!