Trimspa, Other Diet Pills Fined by FTC
The FTC, or Federal Trade Commission, is pretty much the US agency in charge of false advertising punishment and policing, and is “sicked on” companies who sell products that customers have complained about as not doing the things they say they’re going to do in their advertising claims. Well, apparently there are a few very popular diet pills and herbal weight loss pills, one of which I’ve actually used before, that have suffered an FTC fining for false claims.
One of the companies in fact, that was fined for false claims, is a diet pill named Xenadrine actually claimed that their product caused several people to lose weight against a placebo pill, when in fact the FTC uncovered studies when doing their investigation of Xenadrine that the company was aware of themselves, that showed a placebo actually made people lose more weight than the Xenadrine pill! This may be an extreme case of misleading advertising, especially considering the company had blatant proof in their possession that the exact opposite of their inflated claims were true.
Other herbal weight loss pills and diet supplements were fined as well, including a popular vitamin that claims it helps to accelerate the metabolism, another claim the FTC claims is exaggerated or falsified to sell more product, and that is the One a Day WeightSmart vitamin supplement, was fined some money as well although not as much as the bigger offenders.
The other weight loss pills in the investigation that were fined for false or exaggerated weight loss and diet help claims were two others you may have seen advertised or even heard about before, because they are fairly widely marketed and well known diet aids - Xenadrine EFX and CortiSlim.
I believe they probably did these investigations around this time of year because this is the time when most people are looking for supplements and other things to help them shed those winter and holiday pounds. Maybe they’ll crack down again on exaggerated claims right before summer. Who knows.
