The "Belly Fat Ad" Scam

I’m sure you have seen them. The “belly fat” ads which promise that if you “obey 1 rule” or “obey 1 weird old rule,” you will lose scads of fat from around your waist and stomach.

Some of these ads are just text, while others have side by side comparisons – before and after the user (often localized to your part of the country) followed this magic rule.

It’s a scam. Are you surprised? Come on, we all know it’s a trick. The power of denial is the only thing that keeps these companies going. It’s only “weird” and/or “old” in the sense that snake oil salesmen have been running this scam for centuries.

This is yet another “purge” diet, which uses a two-pronged approach: overhydration and diarrhea.  Overhydration is a common strategy with fad diets.  If you drink three gallons of any random low-sugar juice every day, you’ll naturally lose weight, because you aren’t eating.  You’ll lose weight in the short term, at any rate. 

This is basically a liquid fast.  How long can you keep it up?  As soon as you stop, you’ll eat something, and the weight will come right back.

The second part of the diet relies on a “colon cleanser.”  Let’s just say that the faster things move through your system, the fewer calories and grams of fat that are absorbed.  If it moves through fast enough, your body will never take in anything from it, and you’ll lose weight.  It will be like you’d never eaten it at all. 

You know how laxatives are so popular with anorexics?  Same deal.

This particular diet scam relies on the supposed powers of the acai berry. Acai berries are this year’s magic ingredient. Acai berries come from a palm tree that grows in Central and South America. It’s a perfectly nice little berry, and is a popular flavor for ice creams and smoothies in Brazil.

Hucksters claim that acai berry has a myriad of wonderful properties. None of these claims has been scientifically verified.

Acai berry is in the middle of the pack, so far as antioxidant content goes. They have more antioxidants than cranberries, but less than blueberries.

They do not have magic properties to give you energy, heal your wounds, or enlarge your body parts.

The scam artists claim that celebrities such as Rachael Ray, Dr. Oz, and Oprah have extolled the virtue of acai berries. This is 100% a lie.

The colon cleanse part of the diet is every bit as unpleasant as it sounds. And unnecessary, to boot.

There is no such thing as a “buildup of toxins” or “backed up undigested food” in your colon. That’s a lie which leverages your own squeamishness about your body. I can’t emphasize this enough.

What the colon cleanse does accomplish is scouring your system of anything you eat. This helps you lose weight in the short term, because if you rush food through your system fast enough, it doesn’t sink in. It’s another form of starvation fast, and a dangerous one. Anorexics use laxatives to achieve the same results.

By the way, despite what the ads say, Dr. Oz has never endorsed colon cleansers. He believes that these products are every bit as scammy as you would think.