Another week, another internet scam praying on the hopes and insecurities of the general population. Chances are that if you use the internet recently you’ve struggled to miss the ads claiming that you can get ‘ripped’ in four weeks using a ‘secret formula.’

Each advert is accompanied by a lovely picture of an abnormally muscled man which I suppose evens out the plague of cartoon breasts which the Evony campaign gave us. Between the two of them it’s enough to make me want to vomit into my cornflakes.

Don’t get me wrong, if you have the time and it means that much to you to look that way then go for it. But this stuff isn’t aimed at those guys it’s aimed at the people who are too lazy to ever put in the effort to look like these guys but still idly think ‘well that would be pretty cool…’

What really cracks me up about this is the secret formula. As it turns out, the two parts of the secret formula are:

1. Acai Berries: No, sorry. Let me get this right, these are Acai Force Max, which sounds much more manly than eating some girly berries. This isn’t the first time Acai berries have been hailed for their miraculous powers. According to ever-useful Wikipedia, they’ve also been promoted as helping with:

- Sleep

- Sexual performance

- Improved digestion

- ‘Detoxification’ – Man, I get this one all the time, I’m always waking up feeling toxified!

- Improved skin appearance

- Improved heart health

- Reduced Cholestorol

- Something which Wikipedia refers to as ‘high fibre content’ which presumably means they help your bowels move.

True to form it’s also been suggested that they can cure diabetes, make your penis bigger and make you more attractive to women(!). Plus they’ve been linked to credit card scams.

Sadly Acai berries are just berries. They may have a fairly high level of antioxidants but other fruits are better and in any case there is more to nutrition than antioxidants, as important as they may be (and scientists are still far from a definite answer on this).

Miracle ingredient number two is…

2. Cleanse Pro X: This wins the award for most disgusting product name. I love the fact that they’ve had to stick a random X after ‘cleanse pro’ because otherwise it would sound like some kind of toilet cleaner.

I also love the science of Cleanse Pro. Have a read of this:

Cleanse Pro ‘helps you absorb nutrients more efficiently, basically makes all your supplements work "better"’.

‘Better’!? Fantastic! They ‘basically’ just give up halfway through and abandon any pretence at justifying their product scientifically. I also love the fact that they think the first half of the sentence is so complicated that they might need to dumb things down to hold your interest.

Here’s the real science of all of these scams:

- They sell you an overpriced placebo

- They tell you to do some ‘special workout’ (aka exercise)

- They might also tell you not to eat certain (fatty) foods which ‘interfere’ with the ‘special ingredients’

Et voila! If you’re lucky you might lose some weight, but it will be entirely down to your hard work and effort, not some miracle product or workout.

It’s difficult to get too worked up about something which is such an obvious con, but the sad thing is that people will still sign up for the ‘free’ trial and get sucked into this mess, having nothing to show for it four weeks later but whatever’s left of the berries and a feeling of disappointment. Remember folks, if it sounds too good to be true, it definitely is!